Macro photography skills of insects

Lead: Insect macro is more difficult to shoot than flower macro, because insects move greatly and it is difficult to capture the desired picture. Let's take a look at some techniques for shooting insects at macro.

Macro photography skills of insects 1. Equipment preparation

If you want to do a good job, you must sharpen your tools first. Insect photography is different from landscape or portrait in lens selection.

1, lens: you can buy a macro lens when you wear glasses. The function is 1: 1, which can enlarge the scene or take a more detailed picture. For example, EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM macro, and its dual IS image stabilizer can compensate for the translation jitter that has great influence when shooting at close range, such as macro photography. EF 180mm f/3.5L USM macro, the lens can take pictures from infinity to constant magnification, and the constant magnification shooting distance is about 0.48m, which is longer than other Canon macro lenses. MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5X macro, allowing you to shoot at 5 times ultra-high magnification.

2. Macro ring flash: The ring flash is an ideal accessory for macro insect shooting, which not only allows you to shoot with higher shutter speed, lower sensitivity and smaller aperture. You can also make the images you shoot have no shadow effect and full color; Many ring flashlights have left and right tubes. You can also try to use only one flash tube on the flash or adjust the light ratio to create a more interesting three-dimensional effect.

Try to use natural light, technically, you can use supplementary light or shading. Most insects are alert and difficult to get close to. You can try using them on yourself. Safe distance? Shoot first, then get closer to the process before shooting. Of course, photographic equipment is just a tool, and a good tool can certainly add a lot of points to shooting, but how to shoot sincere images requires you to know how to master shooting skills flexibly.

3. Tripod: In some cloudy days or in dark environments in the morning and evening, F8-F 16 is generally used to ensure a large depth of field, and the shutter speed is also below110s or even lower. In order to take clear photos in such natural light, you must bring a tripod. In addition, in order to view flexibly, the angles of the three legs should be separated.

? Insect macro photography skills II. About operation

1, using manual focusing

Every detail of insect photography is an indispensable element, and the clarity of the subject is the key. Most people are used to shooting by autofocus, which will make close-up objects out of focus. Often when the focus subject moves back and forth slightly, the clarity of the picture will be greatly reduced. Experienced photographers usually use manual focusing to shoot, focusing on the eyes of insects is not only more conducive to novices to practice their eyesight and skills, but also to get a clear and sharp picture.

Step 2 try a large aperture

The closer we are to the subject, the shallower the depth of field will be, so even a small aperture can shoot a good background blur. But that doesn't mean you just need to use a small aperture. In fact, sometimes you might as well try a large aperture to reduce the depth of field of the picture, but you can take more outstanding images.

3, high-speed shutter+continuous shooting

Sometimes, even if we are resting insects, our careless actions are likely to disturb them, thus making them make corresponding sudden reactions; Therefore, it is suggested to use the speed priority mode and set the shutter above 1/200s to avoid the jitter effect brought by the hand-held camera and the self-vibration of the camera. Especially shooting some flying or irregular insects, combined with high-speed continuous shooting, can capture the coherent process of insects in a certain state, which is not only conducive to the later selection of more exciting works, but also can ensure the success rate.

Insect macro photography skills III. Shooting opportunity

To photograph insects, you need to find them first. You don't need to go anywhere beautiful. You can usually find them on beaches, canyons or some forest parks, but only if you are patient. Insects also have their own rules of life. If we fully understand this habit, it will be more beneficial for us to take interesting photos.

1, insects feed

Foraging is the most common behavior of insects, so you can follow the foraging without disturbing them when shooting. Insects actually have their own warning lines, as long as we don't cross them? Thunder pool? You can also successfully complete the shooting.

Step 2 mate

In a certain season, different insects will mate, and usually many insects will lay eggs in the water. According to this, you can choose to look at the pond or stream in advance. Insects in mating period are particularly sensitive and alert, so they need to keep a longer shooting distance than usual, and at the same time, shooting from the side can highlight the mating posture better.

Step 3 fly

Pay attention to the control of depth of field and precise focusing when catching flying insects. At this time, you should try to choose a telephoto macro lens and use a small aperture to increase the depth of field while ensuring a high enough shutter speed. If you are not sure that you can finish shooting with manual focus at this time, you need to select the focus mode for tracking and focusing.

Insect macro photography skills iv. Other skills

1. Control the depth of field and focal plane to shoot clear insects.

As a macro lens, its depth of field is very small. When the lens magnification is 1: 1, the aperture is reduced to the minimum value of F22, and the depth of field is only 2mm. If the lens magnification is 1:2, the depth of field is only 6mm. Therefore, the slight movement of the lens and the subject will affect the final focus position, which is why most of the film friends reflect that I am clearly focusing on the bug, but only the flowers in the background are real and the bug is virtual. So I suggest you use a tripod. Conditional cinematographers can also cooperate with cable release to minimize focus drift caused by movement.

Secondly, when shooting insects, we should pay attention to the choice of focal plane. For example, when shooting a butterfly, if the wings of the butterfly are side by side on the back, the best shooting method is to adjust the camera position to make it parallel to the wing surface of the butterfly, so that all the details of the butterfly wings can be clearly displayed. We can create a depth of field without opening a small aperture, and we can also increase the shutter speed to ensure the success rate of shooting.

What we should remember is that no matter shooting from the front, side or even tail of the insect head, we must put the shooting content in a plane. The adjustment of depth of field and focal plane is a delicate process, which requires considerable patience and skillful and fast methods. Models? Waiting for the final escape.

Second, the simple background sets off the insect theme.

When shooting insects, the choice of background is also very important. In order to make an excellent work, besides a clear insect theme, a simple background is also essential. The macro lens itself has a small depth of field, so it is not a problem that the blurred background highlights the subject. It can be achieved by increasing the distance between the background and the insects.

We will find that the background color is as simple as possible, and it must be different from the color of insects. For example, when shooting light-colored insects, it is necessary to choose a dark background, which can better highlight the subject. If the scene shooting environment is not what we want, we can also prepare a black cardboard and put it behind the insects as the background.

Third, use light to show the details of insects.

In many photography textbooks, it is mentioned to avoid taking pictures in direct sunlight or when the light is strong at noon. On the one hand, if the light ratio is too large, the tolerance of digital camera sensor is relatively small, which will cause overexposure in the bright part or underexposure in the dark part and lose details. On the other hand, the direct light is very dazzling, which leads to the decrease of the color saturation of the subject and affects the overall effect of the film. These are also applicable to macro photography of insects. Macro photography must use soft light, that is, scattered light to produce the best effect, so that the whole picture can be evenly illuminated.

Sunlight shooting is the most common shooting method, which uses light to directly illuminate insects. As I said before, we should pay attention to the toughness of light. If the light is very strong, we can put a soft cloth in front of the insects to achieve the effect of scattering light. We can use ordinary printing paper or sulfuric acid paper for art instead, and of course we can also choose soft light in the morning and afternoon to shoot.

Sunlight photography can mainly show the grain, texture and color of insect surface, so insects with rich colors and beautiful grains are more suitable for sunlight photography. Such as ladybugs or beetles, it is easy to show the smooth texture of the shell by using light. The choice of camera metering should use evaluation metering, so don't do too much exposure compensation at this time.

In order to highlight the crystal clear feeling of insect wings, backlight is the best choice. Light passes through the object in front of the camera, and the edge of the insect's body can be brighter by using this light.

Backlight shooting, the background is usually very dark, which can better highlight the details of insects. For example, the fluff on bees is clearly outlined by the light when it is backlit. If you encounter a scene with a large light ratio, you should use a small reflector to fill the front of the main insect. Choosing reflectors with different colors will also change the local color, such as gold, which will produce warm colors. In the aspect of exposure selection, it is suggested that if the background is dark, the exposure compensation should be reduced appropriately to avoid the problem of full exposure.

Fourth, don't shoot casually? Full body photo?

In addition to the full-body photos of insects, we might as well approach them, highlight local details, such as wings and eyes, and make vivid and shocking works. You can also try to break through the conventional perspective and shoot their curves from the upside down angle, which is also beautiful.

Fifth, dot composition occupies a small screen area.

The effect of insect photography depends largely on their peculiar and gorgeous appearance. But if you are facing a simple insect, it is not suitable for close-up composition amplification. You can use point composition in combination with the environment to show their smart side by setting off the environment and background. For example, in the beautiful flowers below, bugs stick their heads out, which makes the picture look particularly vivid under the cover of the foreground.