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Joe Svelnys's picture

Flight of the Carpenter Bee

Flight of the Carpenter Bee. Took a bit but I got him. :)

Nikon Z6, Minimal focal distance, Nikkor 200-500mm @ 500mm. iso400, f/5.6, 1/3000s.

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6 Comments

Very nice! How much did you have to crop?

Thanks!

Here is the shot from the camera; the full sensor; cropped but only a minor one. He was not easy to keep in the viewfinder at close range and 500mm; he was zipping all over the place. AF was about to strangle me; had to use manual focus to get the focal plan at least on him for AF to take over; then a fraction of a second do it all over again. Good times. :)

That is a really cool photo...

Thank you Marcus

I have to say that I am impressed with the focus, the near eye is pin sharp - must have taken a lot of trial & error, correct?

The first encounter lasted a minute or two then he flew off... I thought I was defeated and made peace. About five minutes later he came back to the area and i gave it another go. out of roughly 30 photos, 3 or 4 were in focus; actually not bad really for time vested.

Using Single Focus activation and shutter can only fire when there is focus; saves on a lot of "missed out of focus" shots. Continuous focus could have worked as well but giving the fast movement and erratic movement, continuous would have missed a lot; but could have worked. I'm just not fast enough to keep focus (with continuous) on the bee.