Casual portraits of visitors on our table

Today we made a short walk through a forest close to Munich, close to the end there was a nice restaurant where we had lunch, but these two were interested as well:

This wasp decided to taste from our beer:





This one arrived a bit late for lunch:





Best regards,
Michael

Michael Nagel said:

Today we made a short walk through a forest close to Munich, close to the end there was a nice restaurant where we had lunch, but these two were interested as well:

This wasp decided to taste from our beer:

Click to expand...

Michael,

If this is a casual shot, you set a high mark for the rest of us, LOL! This is so impressive. I like the fine detail even down to the body hairs. Here I'd love to know what lens you happened to have with you and how you got such DOF!

Asher

Hi Asher,

Thanks. The photos were taken using an Olympus OM-D E-M5 and this fine lens. No PP involved.

The second picture of the first post was at ISO 2500.
The first one was at f5.6, the second and the following one were at f8.

I only hat the time for five shots, one was not sharp, the third of the wasp was simple not interesting at all.

All were taken without tripod, just my hands resting on the table...


Best regards,
Michael

Wow those close-up images are amazing. I love the photo of the bee. How close did you have to get to them?

Michael,

I looked up this lens and a lot of folk online rave about it!

BTW, are the wasp pictures cropped? I was wondering how much more detail one could get in a 100% crop?

Asher

I like the first guy a lot!

Richard - thanks. The wasp was approx. 5cm (~2 inches for all metric-impaired) from the lens.

Rachel - thanks. After my wife saved the wasp from drowning, it was occupied with cleaning and did not bother us afterwards.

Asher- here is an unprocessed 100% crop from the first picture posted. The original picture was not cropped, just reduced in size:


There is still some enhacement possible - this is the OOC jpeg.

Best regards,
Michael

Michael Nagel said:

Richard - thanks. The wasp was approx. 5cm (~2 inches for all metric-impaired) from the lens.

Rachel - thanks. After my wife saved the wasp from drowning, it was occupied with cleaning and did not bother us afterwards.

Asher- here is an unprocessed 100% crop from the first picture posted. The original picture was not cropped, just reduced in size:

wasp-midsection​

There is still some enhacement possible - this is the OOC jpeg.

Best regards,
Michael

Click to expand...

Extraordinary!

What a fine macro setup you have! Imagine if you stepped your plane of focus, you'd have a 3d wasp, LOL!

Asher

Different table, more visitors.




Best regards,
Michael

What's this fly doing in my soup, waiter.

Backstroke I think, sir.

Groucho Marks.

Michael Nagel said:

Different table, more visitors.

Click to expand...

Hi Michael,

Nice series. Also interesting is to see the different types of insect feet used to adhere to the glass surface.

Here is a shot I made a long time ago, where I also noticed the odd looking contraptions:


Apparently, flies use a combination of small hairs and sticky oily substance to get stuck, but use other large hairs
or claws to break the bond again (explained here). The yellow spots are clumps of pollen.

Cheers,
Bart

Hi Michael,

seems like this is the camera I'll go for as an all-day-companion ...

Tom - yes, i remember that one...

Bart - Thanks. Yes, I noticed that. The fun for me is that for most these visitors are annoying (sometimes for me as well), but when you know how to deal with them they are much less of a nuisance and sometimes interesting subjects for macros.

Wolfgang - Thanks and yes, but not only for macros.

Best regards,
Michael

Michael,

I wonder what lens you used? I checked and the IPTC code is empty! At the least you could have your © recorded!!!!

Your pictures are worth protecting and then with luck a major corporation will use them!



But really, I'm fascinated how you get such superb macros "casually" with any lens-camera combo!

Asher

Bart_van_der_Wolf said:

Hi Michael,

Nice series. Also interesting is to see the different types of insect feet used to adhere to the glass surface.

Here is a shot I made a long time ago, where I also noticed the odd looking contraptions:

Apparently, flies use a combination of small hairs and sticky oily substance to get stuck, but use other large hairs
or claws to break the bond again (explained here). The yellow spots are clumps of pollen.

Cheers,
Bart

Click to expand...

Thanks for this fascinating insight! Always humbling to learn a tad more of what we don't know of the natural world!

Asher

Hi Asher,

Asher Kelman said:

I wonder what lens you used? I checked and the IPTC code is empty! At the least you could have your © recorded!!!!

Click to expand...

It is the same lens-camera combo as used for the previous pictures. The copyright is there, but in the EXIF data.
The easiest way to see it is to click on the three dots (lower right of the image) and to choose the appropriate item to view these (direct link here). flickr strips the metadata off all smaller versions of the photo, so you have to look on the 'original' upload. Again, click on the three dots, choose the item that allows to see all sizes and then choose the original version, direct link to the picture here.

Asher Kelman said:

Your pictures are worth protecting and then with luck a major corporation will use them!

Click to expand...

It is there - but I do not think that this will happen. Maybe something for another try if macro work is interesting for a gallery, but in this case - I am not fan of the macros heavy on PP with exaggerated contrast and saturation. So I don't think that these will be of interest...

Asher Kelman said:

But really, I'm fascinated how you get such superb macros "casually" with any lens-camera combo!

Click to expand...

Thanks - it was the same as the above, but the X10 is also quite useful for this kind of macro.
Besides good IQ, useability and speed are required for moving insects...
The small fly did not stay longer than 3-4 sec. in one spot...

Best regards,
Michael

I can imagine them stealing a great bumble bee picture for honey! That's a good thing,Michael, if it happens, LOL!

I'm so impressed that you grab focus so fast and that lens is less them 9 inches from the insect! Great reflexes on your part! The Olympus is such a fine platform. I wonder how you would decide to buy a system if you were not already invested in Olympus. Would the new Sony full frame Alpha 7 Mirrorless win or perhaps the new Pentax K3, given their current refinements and focus capabilities.

Although numbers favor the larger sensors, pictures speak for themselves and 4/3 seems pretty fantastic. The much larger Canon bodies might even be less useful in practice for handheld casual shooting as they are 3 times as heavy and so we are unlikely to be as agile in use at such close distance. Perhaps with a 100mm or 150 mm focal length instead of the 60mm you used here, the FF images could be superb, but then the depth of field would decrease. So it might be that the 4/3 is a sweet spots for handheld macros of insects.

Looking to see more of your wonderful shots of visitors to your table.

Asher