An Entire Gallery of Hoverflies

As a direct result of helping Adam Woolfitt to solve what looked like a terminal situation with his computer, he asked me to meet him to collect a present to say thank you for saving him from having to pay out a hefty sum for a new motherboard. We met on a garage forecourt at Hemel Hempstead where he gave me a pistol grip and electronic cable release that he had personally made up in his home workshop.

At the handover we both practised using the grip to take macro photographs of some local hoverflies, and he learnt just how hard it is to capture these, sharply focussed and free from motion blur, but it proved the grip would work. That was Sunday and so today, Tuesday, I spent a break from the computer to give it a full and thorough-going test in my garden, first with his loaned Sigma 180mm macro without optical stabilisation and with the smallest extension ring and then with my Canon 100mm with stabilisation.

The first row were taken with the 180mm, and the rest with the 100mm. If the longer lens had had stabilisation, it would be easier to work because of the extra distance from the subject, but it is far heavier and the lack of stabilisation is really noticeable.

I was operating using a standard Canon 550EX Speedlite which meant it was very easy for the flash to be inadvertently shielded by intervening leaves above the hoverfly, resulting in lost frames due to severe underexposure! However, the grip proved its worth in allowing me to have a more balanced camera platform, and I am pleased with the gallery of images I succeeded in capturing. I will add, some images have been cropped for compositional reasons.