Lately I’ve been changing the way I take macro shots of active insects like bumble bees. Previously I have used magnification and single AF. This works well for slow insects. But not as well for fast moving butterflies and bees. So talking to someone who does a lot macro he recommended continuous autofocus. So I tried it. One problem is that magnified view doesn’t work during continuous AF. But what I did find was that the keeper rate did improve greatly for fast movers like bumble bees.
And that got me thinking. A-mount lenses also don’t have magnified view in AF modes. So it occurred to me that these lenses would also become more accurate in continuous AF macro shots. So I tried out the Minolta 200mm f\4 macro lens and it worked quite well on larger insects like bumble bees and dragon flies. Then I tried it on really tiny flies and this was haphazard. For these I found throwing it into manual focus and using magnified view was the only way to get really tiny critters in perfect focus.
And that is limiting with live creatures in the outside environment where every puff of breeze ruins the focus. So this leads me to think that the 200 macro will be limited to larger insects. The Sony e-mount 90mm macro will be much better for the really tiny things. And for slower insects I’ll use magnified view and single AF. For faster bugs I’ll go with continuous AF and spray and pray I get the perfect shot.
Beautiful shots. I especially like the iridescence visible on the fly and its wings.
Thanks Jason. Yeah, those little flies and bees have crazy colors that, as you mention, are caused by light getting broken up into a spectrum. Using continuous autofocus I hope to get a lot more keeper shots of these miniature critters. And I have to get better about deleting the thousands of bad shots I have.
“file house-keeping” sucks
As anyone who’s known me will attest I am definitely in the running for the title “World’s Laziest Man.” But I am rapidy filling up 8 terabytes of drive on my old photo desktop. Something’s gotta give.