Hoverflies and Other Budliea Pollinators

It seemed cooler outside than in, so lunchtime took me outside with the Canon 7D and the Canon 100mm Macro with its onboard flash. The sun was in and out of cloud cover making it as difficult as possible for me to keep adjusting both the ISO and Aperture to take this gallery of images mainly of the hoverflies, of which I saw at least three different species, and within any specific group there were different ages.

Because some were half the size of the largest, I took a control shot of my thumbnail against a single flower head of the Verbena as most were found feeding on its pollen, with fewer going for the florettes of the Budliea whose size was easier to judge.

The most striking variety was a bright yellow that I had not come across before, and one looked very like a bee. I was lucky to get a few shots where the insect was still in flight, but a couple had just taken off and remained in frame from when I was taking a shot whilst they were static.

I started off with the flash set to one third over exposure and the ambient set to one third under, but eventually I set the flash to a full stop over and the ambient one and a third under with a few changes of ISO from 1600 down to 250 when the sun was fully out and I was shooting around the edges of the verbena clump.

I was reasonably happy with the end result considering how few were around despite the warmth.

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.