Wildlife: Wasps on a pond

[stephbg]

The problem with living things is they have this terribly inconvenient tendency to move about. I saw these wasps coming to drink at my pond, so I thought I would try and catch a shot while they were briefly still. A tricky proposition because the camera's macro mode is not kind to moving subjects, but there was plenty of light so I gave it a go.



These first few are just static poses as I was intending:



It's a shame they were all attracted to the rather grungy dead leaf.




Bonus two-shot:




But this one's my favourite, even though I thought at the time it was a writeoff:




Ain't serendipity grand?

Comments

[drhoz.livejournal.com]

three different species, by the looks of it

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

I have quite the ecosystem at Sector 7 :-)

[leahcim.livejournal.com]

Aha, DrHoz, just the man I'm after! :P

On a not entirely unrelated note you might want to look here if you haven't done so already.

*apologises to Steph for the distraction*

[drhoz.livejournal.com]

Sweet! Mind if I cross-post the link?

[leahcim.livejournal.com]

Sure, go right ahead. Keep in mind that (as the URL suggests) it probably shouldn't be treated as a permalink though. :P

[drhoz.livejournal.com]

ok

[leahcim.livejournal.com]

Nice. I agree photographing bugs is tricky, no doubt made trickier by the contrasty lighting and (I'm guessing) your camera giving best macro at the wide end of the zoom instead of the telephoto end? The middle two photos are a toss-up for my favourite.

What are the white specks in the water?

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

The white specks are bits of duckweed.

Macro mode doesn't really support any kind of zoom at all (if I'm interpreting you correctly). It's possible that I could have done something about the lighting, but I didn't really have time to tinker.

[leahcim.livejournal.com]

Yes, you seem to be interpreting me correctly. :)

With SLR zoom lenses, the minimum focus distance tends to not change with the zoom position, resulting in the maximum magnification (ie. how big the bugs appear on screen) occurring at the telephoto end of the zoom. With compact cameras, minimum focus distance actually increases quite drastically with zoom, which is why your camera probably disables the zoom in macro mode, and (at least with the compacts I've owned) maximum magnification therefore happens at the wide end of the zoom.

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

Zoom isn't disabled in macro mode, but you do have to back away from the subject if you're in close so there's not much point. I do use it if I can't/won't get *very* close to my subjects (giant chunky spiders for one), but I don't take many pictures like that.