I spent the last few weeks organizing, tidying up, and putting some finishing touches on many of the macro photos I’ve taken over the past ~9 months and put together an album of my favorites. I picked out 10 to share directly here but there’s a lot more in the full gallery (and at higher resolution). Hopefully the Flickr embeds work…
Great work. My favs are the stinkbug and the dragonfly. I really appreciate any good wildlife work, we need more people to be aware and start to appreciate all the wonderful creatures we share our planet with.
Beautiful work, there we see what concentration on a certain field & technique can bring us. I like the quiet way you developed the pictures. On Flickr I saw many more excellent photo’s, some even better - in my eyes - than the selection you gave us here. Do have a look there if you’ve a moment to spare…
Very nice work, congratulations! The two things I like the most about these photos are
The subdued colors. A lot of macro shots have saturation cooked to the extreme, so the photo looks like a Fisher-Price toy for babies. Your colors are more lifelike and don’t distract from the insects.
The compositions, especially having a context. A lot of (otherwise technically excellent) macro shots have “insect before homogeneous background”, yours have flowers (I especially like the last one, the black beetle), plant parts protruding into the foreground, and similar. It tells a more complete story.
Incidentally, what’s the lens? EXIF tells me the camera is a Canon EOS R10, but the lens info is blank. (Just curious.)
These are really nice and I second @Tamas_Papp, on your use of context and subdued colors. I’ve seen too many macro shots where insects are made to look like aliens and I think you’ve managed to capture the detail while respecting the subject. I looked at your Flickr feed and it’s impressive how you were able to capture shots while in flight.
Having been bitten by the macro bug myself (pun intended), I’d also be interested in your lens and flash set up.
Thank you! Neither of those things were intentional at first but as I kept at it I started developing a feel for what I liked and not sticking to trying to copy what I’ve seen in other macro shots. These are all single shots, not focus stacks (except the damselfly which is a 2-shot stack that I just happened to be able to do without intending to) so backing off a bit gives a lot more leeway in the depth of field. Also, it just makes dealing with more skittish creatures a lot easier. That mason bee on the pink flower, for example, those things just hated me being up close and were zipping from one flower to the next faster than I could get them in focus.
I was really worried about the colors being “too much” but I’m glad you don’t think so. Darktable really helps here. In Lightroom, like many of the controls, it feels like there is no subtlety. I would increase the vibrance to 6 or 10 (out of 100!) and it would often feel like way too much. In color balance rgb I can make big changes to the saturation sliders with subtle impact. It has the two-fold benefit of being able to have more subtle adjustments and also not having to worry about being too precise.
It took me 3-4 weeks to get what I would consider an acceptable shot off one of the bee flies (literally just any shot in focus would be acceptable to me) but that one in flight showed up one day and did not seem to care about me one bit. They hover around for a few seconds but can be skittish and fast. That one just let me walk right up and snap many shots while he hovered.
The lens is fully manual and no EXIF data due to Canon shenanigans.
The flash is good enough for what I’m doing but if you are interested in focus stacking it may not be fast enough. I tried a few times and it would misfire on several shots. I’m not sure if that’s the flash or my camera body though.
Honestly the most important thing I think is the diffuser. I put off getting one because paying $100+ USD for a diffuser seemed like an extravagance to me. But as soon as I did it was immediately apparent how much it makes a difference. AK, Cygnustech, MK, they are all similar and I doubt there’s a significant difference between them. But compared to the <$10 foldable diffuser I was using before it was like a revelation.
From all the videos and advice I sought out while learning this stuff, I think people really undersell the value of a good diffuser.
I’m using an R7 with the EF 100mm f/2.8 macro along with a Raynox DCR-150 close up lens when I want to get beyond 1x. I’ve been eying that Laowa…
The AK diffuser is nice and yes, it makes a world of difference. The owner, Zamir Pena, is a really nice guy. He answered my emails within a day and walked me through my setup to make certain my order was correct.
I’ve had luck with the Godox TT685C flash. When powered by Eneloop NiMh rechargeables I can get 10-12 consecutive flashes at 1/16 power.
Weevil in poppy flower by Andrew Raub, on Flickr
Ant by Andrew Raub, on Flickr
Shield bug by Andrew Raub, on Flickr
Bee fly on sunflower by Andrew Raub, on Flickr
Damselfly in early June by Andrew Raub, on Flickr
Ladybug larva feeding on aphids by Andrew Raub, on Flickr
Crab spider by Andrew Raub, on Flickr
Crab spider eating bee by Andrew Raub, on Flickr
Ladybug by Andrew Raub, on Flickr
Mason bee by Andrew Raub, on Flickr