Went on a BC walk at Denbies on 22 May; about 10 of us gathered at the gates to Steer's Field. I learned a lot during the walk and saw the species that I'd hoped: Green Hairstreak and Adonis Skipper. Didn't do too much photography and beginning to see the limitations of my setup; the people with tru...

Went over to Denbies on a ridiculously warm May 1st Sunday morning (~22C) and took a right down after Steer's field towards the copse down the right path. Spotted plenty of: Grizzled Skippers, Dingy Skippers, Brimstones, and a pair of fiercely quarreling Green Hairstreaks thanks to Ralph Clark's kee...

Using flash on a dull day for lower ISO would tend to suggest that you're using flash as key, not as fill. It's perfectly doable - but I'd suggest go out and practice on something easy first, it's helped me a lot finding my settings. The difficulty you have is black backgrounds. In my experimentatio...

I envy you folks that arn't stuck in an office during the week!

Thank y'all very much - these are tremendously encouraging responses and I'm starting to think that I might have a chance at my little mission! I would love to stumble into some people here - seems like a font of knowledge and the photography standard is extremely high; there's a lot of inspiration ...

Hello, I'm a bit of a photography hobbyist and whilst I'm ok with general macro photography, I've set myself a mission to get 20 ok photos of butterflies in 2016 (butterflies are almost completely new for me). Ok as in open aperture, perpendicular pose, interesting species etc. I think I've got enou...

No, the fluorine doesn't need to be replaced - it's just a coating designed to repel sensor dust. The system is ultrasonic - bottom line, it tries to shake the dust off with ultrasonic vibrations. Works a lot of the time and definitely better than nothing, but not infallable. If you get sticky senso...

Just curious, do people here recommend using a polariser at all (or x-pol) when/if using flash fill?

Thx

For anyone coming to this, also have a look at the Manfrotto 685B Neotec. It has a gun-like grip at the top to loosen/fasten and with a footholder thing at the bottom - it is a one handed operation to operate - very quick. See http://extreme-macro.co.uk/macro-monopod/

Regards

Hi , I've just moved from film to digital and I have noticed that even at f/16 the depth of field on digital is not as sharp as the results I used to get on film. Even going down to f/20 , I am not convinced it gives a better DOF. In digital I use a Canon D1200 with a Sigma 150mm f/2.8 Macro lens w...

Beautiful... of ook "heel mooi"! Us, being on an island cut off from the continent with the channel in between, means we do end up with less wildlife than on the continent sadly. Once they're gone they're gone.

Natural wear and tear - many old moths have this. For example an older moth might have fallen on its back and the buzzing around will wear off the scales. Or trying to get into narrow spaces. A pot won't help though because they flutter around and lose scales, from the head too. I usually see scales...