Jun 25

Jun 25 All The Small Things

Where oh where would I be without long grass on a warm spring/summer’s day? And who needs a safari when you can find one in miniature among some long grass near you? I took the 100mm Macro F/2.8 lens out and about recently to some fields of grass to soak up the sun, and transport myself to the land of the miniature for a while, to capture some of the amazing, bizarre and beautiful sights that this overlooked place can provide.

Upon first glance, it is fairly uninteresting other than the grass undulating and swaying in the breeze, the odd noise from a cricket of fly, or a quick glimpse of a butterfly flitting around between the grass thronds. But sit down for a few minutes in the middle of a patch of it and suddenly this other world starts to show itself to you more and more. Before long you will get all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures from this world start to show themselves, and give a little glimpse into their lives in this sea of grass.

Now granted I am blessed with an L series macro lens, which allows me to achieve these shots, but there are cheaper options such as https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sigma-105mm-Macro-Canon-Cameras/dp/B0058NYVXG , so given some patience, a good strong light source plus a lens with some form of macro function, you can achieve similar shots to mine.

16 spot ladybird with Aphids - 100mm Macro F/2.8

7-Spot Ladybird about to take flight- 100mm Macro F/2.8

One thing that I have learned over the years when it comes to macro work is that if you are looking to get a half decent image, you need a high shutter speed and an aperture of around F/7-F/10 which needs good, strong light to achieve. When I started off with this lens I was using it wide open at F/2.8 so the ISO could be as low as possible but I found that when shooting really close up, it was only picking out small parts of the subject and the rest was blurred. These days I still keep the ISO in my mind but if its around ISO 800-2000 it will still produce usable images so I let the camera do the work. I do also have a ring flash, but it has been broken for awhile now, after a piece of the hinge that holds the batteries in snapped off, so I have been making do with shooting macro in very strong sunlight like I had for the images in this post.