The little things

Furthering my quest to capture critters I tried to build a board to hold both flashes, rather than buy a dedicated macro unit, flush with the lens. I gave up in the end. Why do these little things not stand still long enough?

Dreams of...

...winter. Yes. I am one of the odd ones. I hate summer, summer should be banned. Summer is for holidays by the sea or the pool, not for wildlife photographers. I dream of dark mornings, clouds and a distinct lack of insects. Wildlife is slightly less likely to make a run for it because it is hungry, and you are always a potential source of food. So here are some more winter dreams, there will be more as I get to them. 

Of course as I say this Bavaria is in for 3 days of rain. 

...and now for something completely different!

Yes. Having wandered the forest in search of the animals for so long I decided I needed a change. So here are my first ever attempts at macro, with standard 430ex flash and diffuser. I will say this, it is hard. Took over 300 shots and am left with about five. The critters do not sit still, they move at tremendous speed, the plants sway in the wind and image stabilizers do nothing when you are 30cm from your subject. On top of this the 7D has a terrible diffraction problem, so shots at f11 are soft. But because you are at f11 your shutter speed is slower than a dead slug, so your shots are softer. So you up the ISO....which means your shots lack detail. It is cool!

So here we go, all at ISO 800 with flash as it was a very sunny day. Oh yes, shot with the recently acquired 100mm f2.8 IS L macro lens.It is SHARP but my shots might not be.