From a compositional point of view I think it sticks to the rules, the bee is on a third, as is the lavender.  I also like the feel of the shot – I can almost smell the lavender and hear the bees buzzing around.

This is a male bee (you can tell this by his yellow face) and is a bright yellow and black bee – they really stand out if you see them.

The shot was taken hand held – I had upped the ISO to 400, and put it on shutter priority, 1/125secs, at f/8.0 (needless to say my macro lens was put to use).

Today I took a trip to Ryton Organic Gardens to test drive my new camera, and, predictably, it was the macro function that got the workout (there isn’t much in the way of landscape to photograph at this time of year at Ryton).  To make things even better the anenome blanda were flowering (one of my favourite spring flowers) and they were being visited by bees – another favourite photography topic of mine.

The S90 has a lot of features that make it a great point and shoot, but which I will possibly never use.  I set the camera onto macro function in the program mode and kept the ISO at 200.  The camera chose a focal length of 6mm, a shutter speed of 1/400secs (I don’t think the ixus would have been that fast) and f/4.0.

I think this picture is pretty good, I like the colours as they come out of the camera, and it seems pretty sharp.  The only thing that was misbehaving was the bee!

When I put it in Lightroom and zoomed in I was still pretty happy with the result – you can judge for yourself – the shot below is pretty much a 1:1 crop.

So, first impressions – when it comes to macros it produces the excellent images I have come to expect from Canon (although I have had a little bit of wandering focus that I will have to master).

Bumble Bee in Flight

As I have previously stated, taking good photos of bees is more difficult than you would think and has become a bit of a mission for me this summer. However, taking a picture of a bee in flight is an entirely different level of difficult and remains an ambition not yet fulfilled.

This is my best effort to date. I was hand-holding with my 100mm macro lens early-ish in the morning, ISO 200, f/9.0, 1/640 secs. I would like to get it to look as though the wings were still, but I need a faster shutter speed, and that would have involved either less depth of field or a higher ISO rating.

I prefer, if possible not to go above ISO 200, I know that with my EOS 400D that ISO 400 should be OK, but I have tried and not really been happy with the results for macro work. I also prefer to be at a minimum of f/8.0 with my macro lens when taking photos of insects as it is difficult enough to get them in focus and to stay there. Finding that the shallow depth of field has rendered half of the insect out of focus in an otherwise great shot can be heartbreaking.

Bumble Bee

I have tried to capture bumble bees on many occasions, all with very little success. They are usually recognisable as a bee, but the fuzziness was not all down to the bee itself! They move so much, have so much work to do, that it is difficult to track them and to make sure you have a fast enough shutter speed.

This is my best attempt yet, and amazingly was taken with my Canon Ixus compact camera. This has a macro function, but other than changing the ISO rating I have no control over aperture or shutter speed.