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CElliottUK
Remember the garden building project? One of the elements was a wild life area-a pond with wild area behind it. Just a few months on it's absolutely buzzing with life
On the subject of my garden, the ladybirds have done a stunning job. I would say that the beans are now 99% aphid free
@Christine: The pond and area behind it, is a source of daily joy and amazement. Every day there's something different to see. One day it's afrog, next day a newt, next day dragonflies, water-boatmen, water beetles. But if have to be quick, what is there one day isn't there the following day-where do they all go to? The poppies are really strange, each day one will open, and it's completely mobed by up to 20-yes 20-hoverflies, bees and other insects. The following day, it's left alone, and another flower takes centre stage. I wonder if as well as pollen and sugar, the poppies produce some sort of opiate, and that's what attracts the insects. The seeds were really expensive, but on a pound-per-joy basis, they were a great investment.
@grouser: Umm, that's a good tug, I'll wait until there's something going on which is bigger than a couiple of mm, and do a general shot
@Curly: Yep, these are hoverflies. On the ISO/lens setting front, I now standardise on 1600 for everything. Certainly in everything except the dimmest conditions, there's no visible noise, so it gives me whatever shutter speed I want. I did a lot of experiments with the 100mm macro lens, and it's sweet spot is anywhere between f8 and f11. Less than this and the DoF is unworkably small, anything over that and you get iris refraction, which makes the actual images start to go soft again(The increased DoF, makes you think that the shots are sharp, but they aren't) So this was a simple set-up-set 1600, and find which of the favoured apertures gave me the highest shutter speed to try and capture the wing movement. On a general note, it seems that any lens aperture above f16 gives the iris refraction problem-it's a law of physics-nothing that the manufacturers can do anything about, so, this 100mm lens is acting "Normally"
Canon EOS 7D
1/1000 second
F/10.0
ISO 1600
100 mm
