How to take high-quality photos of insects and two reptiles at macro?

Jin Chen, the founder of Cool Bug Planet, has rich experience in tropical rain forest exploration. He is a popular science writer and photographer signed by Gai Hua. He has been photographing wildlife for ten years. I graduated from China Agricultural University, majoring in plant protection and entomology. He went to Tibet twice to take part in animal and plant shooting projects.

He edited or published a number of ecological popular science books, such as Insect Ecological Picture Book, Lotus Secret Land, Cool Insect Wild Interest-Dragonfly and so on. He published a new species of China dragonfly, Black Sock Fan. Popular science articles often appear in newspapers and magazines, such as Forest and People, Nature, Pupils' Learning Newspaper and the photographic work Airborne Special Forces.

In the past, real macro photography required special equipment and high-precision accessories.

The invention of digital camera completely changed this situation. Digital cameras can take close-ups like special equipment.

1. Equipment selection: Is the fuselage "Quan Huafu" or "half frame"?

At present, there are two kinds of digital cameras in the digital camera market: small digital cameras and single-lens reflex cameras (referred to as "SLR"), but small digital cameras are not as good as SLR in focusing speed and image quality, so it is recommended to use the latter when shooting active insects or reptiles.

SLR cameras have two kinds of bodies: Quan Huafu and APS-C.

Although the image quality of "Quan Huafu" camera is very good, it is often not enough to shoot cold-blooded animals with high vigilance, such as dragonflies, butterflies, frogs and snakes, and not only does the subject account for a small proportion in the picture.

In addition, after cutting the photo, you will find some problems, such as inaccurate theme color and out of focus, the root cause is that they are not close enough.

However, when they are close to shooting, it is easy to scare them away. At this time, the advantage of the "half-frame" fuselage can be reflected, because it can increase the focal length of your lens by 1.5- 1.6 times, so if you use a 60 mm macro lens on a half camera, it will be 90 mm, and 150 mm will be 225 mm

In this way, we can shoot larger objects at a distance without disturbing insects.

After the fuselage is selected, the macro lens with magnification of 1: 1 is a moderately priced 60 mm macro lens? Or the more expensive telephoto macro head? For example, 180mm.

Same as the fuselage, the answers are medium distance and telephoto macro. 100 mm is the most popular macro level, which is not only convenient to use, but also has a good Jiao Wai blur effect, which can extend the working distance when shooting.

If you use a short-focus macro lens, it means that the working distance is very close. In the wild, you will find that insects and plants can't move at all. Most of them can only shoot.

The advantage of figure 1 telephoto macro is that you can get close to the butterfly licking salt without disturbing them.

Figure 2 telephoto macro enables me to photograph the Lhasa rock lizard living on the cliff.

Fig. 3 When shooting poisonous snakes with telephoto macro, you can stay away and keep a safe distance.

2. Patience: Patience can often lead you to make unexpected movies.

Shooting natural subjects in Yuan Ye is not like climbing mountains or running to see who walks faster. Burst mode is not worth turning on, but the slower the better.

Although you can observe more things by slowing down, if you are shooting dragonflies, butterflies or climbing mountains, you can keep a constant speed.

When large insects or lizards are found, they can approach slowly to avoid moving quickly. They are quite sensitive to this. Crawling is the best approach posture, and squatting and walking can also effectively reduce the interference to animals.

If you can't do it at first time, try again. The more patient you are, the more you can improve the success rate of shooting.

If you accidentally disturb the stopped dragonfly, you don't have to rush to catch it. You just need to be patient and stay where you are, and it will fly back to its original place soon. If you are lucky, you can take a close-up photo of its compound eye or part.

In summer, many small animals like to move in sunny and windy weather, and their peak activity is two hours before noon.

Waiting for rabbits is a good shooting strategy. The longer you wait, the more opportunities and types you can get. Being at low altitude is a test of people's heat resistance, so you must be prepared to sweat at any time.

The more patient you are, the more beautiful or dramatic you are. For example, a dragonfly will mistake another dragonfly for a stone or a branch and stop on it.

Fig. 4 Spider preys on tree frog, upside down world.

Figure 5 After waiting patiently, I finally took a picture of Huaxi rain frog blowing bubbles.

Fig. 6 Dragonflies even faint from heat.

Figure 7 Waiting patiently by the pond at night, I met a newly hatched dragonfly.

3. Plane and depth of field: Using a large aperture can create a dreamy spot and reduce the noise of the picture.

The ideal animal "ID photo" is mainly on the side or back, and the subject must be clear from left to right or from top to bottom.

This requires that the focal plane should be accurately grasped when shooting. It is necessary to carefully observe whether the focal plane ensures that the head, chest and abdomen of the insect or two reptiles are clear. If not, a slight horizontal rotation is required on the same axis.

In other words, keep the focal plane of the camera parallel to the side or back of the animal's body, and make sure to prevent the camera from shaking.

The photographer's slight breathing will affect the clarity of the photos, so you should breathe for a long time and hold your breath if necessary.

If you haven't practiced "Iron Hands", it is recommended to use a tripod to keep it stable, although it will bring great inconvenience to the control, and it is very likely that animals will be frightened and run away when moving the heavy tripod.

Fig. 8 When shooting fruit flies, the jitter caused by breathing will make the camera deviate from the focal plane.

When it comes to "depth of field", it will naturally be associated with "aperture", because the size of aperture determines the width of depth of field. Because the body surface of an insect or lizard is not as flat as paper, it is necessary to use a small aperture (such as F 1 1- 16) to obtain a wider depth of field to accommodate its entire side or back.

It is worth noting that the weak light input caused by small aperture will reduce the image quality. The smaller the aperture, the worse the image quality, and the blur effect is not good, resulting in the background color is not fresh and bright enough.

If you take a full-body photo of a larger insect or lizard, you can choose the aperture of F5.6-8. A large aperture can create a dreamy spot and reduce the noise in the picture.

Fig. 9 The abdomen, head and chest of Corbicula fluminea are not in the same focal plane, so it is blurred.

The focal plane of the picture 10 is accurately grasped, and the head, chest and abdomen of Corbicula fluminea are clearly displayed.

Figure 1 1 Shooting the reflection behind Corbicula fluminea with large aperture.

Depth of field is not only related to aperture, but also closely related to shooting distance. If you are far away from the subject, you will have a very wide depth of field, and the separation between the subject and the environment is not obvious, thus making the photo expressionless.

If you are close and the depth of field is shallow and narrow, it is difficult to focus manually or automatically. For example, if you take a macro photo with high magnification, it will be empty if you are not careful.

Therefore, it is necessary to find a suitable shooting distance when shooting, so there is no harm in trying more shooting.

Comparison of depth of field between the following figure 12 and figure 13 with the same distance and different apertures, figure F 14 on the left and figure F8 on the right.

Comparing the depth of field of Figure 14 with Figure 15 at different distances in the same aperture, the distance on the left is about 2 meters, and the distance on the right is about 1 meter.

4. Advanced: When shooting at macro, you need to focus manually for fine adjustment.

The flying version of Insects gives people the most authentic ecological feelings, such as the short hovering or long gliding of dragonflies, which naturally becomes the prime time to capture pictures.

At this point, the autofocus mode of the camera is completely unreliable. Only after trying to shoot flying dragonflies can we realize that the significance of shooting comes from traditional manual focusing.

In macro photography, autofocus is not easy and accurate in most cases, so manual focusing is needed for fine adjustment.

Shutter priority mode is the main setting, the speed is generally 1/500 seconds, and the shooting focal length is 200-300. If it is in a sunny environment, there is no need to use a flash.

Figure 16 Glazed dragonflies glide smoothly in the vilen.

Finding the slow flight period of dragonflies has become the key to shooting. If a photographer suddenly appears in front of a dragonfly resting on a rock in a stream, some species will suddenly take off and hover briefly. Therefore, when observing this kind of dragonflies, you can prepare for shooting in advance and adjust the parameters before you approach, otherwise the opportunity will be fleeting.

When most dragonflies lay eggs in water or males look for mates along streams, they will have a small and stable flight path and even hover for a certain period of time. At this time, they can take snapshots like athletes' "flying saucers", or blind shot by placing wide-angle cameras at points, so there is always a certain chance to get clear images.

Figure 17 "Fan Yuan Wuxu Bridge" hovering for a long time has become the best model for practicing flight shooting.

Photo 18 Shooting the duckling with bow back by the stream with wide-angle blind shot.

It is much more difficult to photograph flying butterflies. Their flying posture moves up and down like waves, which is faster, even when gliding, which tests people's prediction ability. Only when butterflies visit flowers, the speed will become slow, so waiting at the honey source is the best time to shoot flying butterflies. The success rate of approaching blind shot with wide-angle or fisheye lens will be higher, otherwise it can only be described as accidental shooting.

Figure 19 The butterfly jumps by chance.