It was fun watching and photographing this bee in the summer at a nearby park.
Is this a composite: No
1/1000
300mm
f/6.3
800 ISO
Slight crop, and lowered exposure slightly, my iso was too high when I took this shot. I also probably should have had a smaller aperture.
Vanessa, so glad to have you on NPN. I hope you find this site all you had hoped it to be.
Nabbing a shot of a tiny bee in mid flight isn’t all that easy, but you pulled it off. To me, I feel like the space to the right (behind the bee) isn’t improving the image, so if it was mine I think I would crop some off from the right side, which would make it “feel” like the bee has more room in the direction he is flying. It appears a bit bright on my screen, so you might could pull the exposure back some more. Were you shooting in manual mode? You are right though, that the ISO would be the first adjustment to consider lowering. The DOF seems pretty good to me, and you did a fine job stopping the bee and having him sharp, so 1/1000 was a nice shutter speed for the subject in flight. Very impressive for your first macro image posted here. Looking forward to more.
Thank you, so much, what do you think of this crop? Square and tight was what I originally had in mid, but I was afraid that it would be too unconventional. I also brought the exposure down a bit more…thank you for your time and interest!
Vanessa, I like it. I was actually thinking of more of a 4X5 crop, but I think this works too. The exposure does look better. Some of the flowers look like it was a blow out and so you probably aren’t able to recover that. For the future, keep an eye on your histogram (also put the blinkies on so that you can tell too in the image on the back of your screen is blown out). In this case, you couldn’t ask the bee to pose for you again, but should another photo opportunity come along (another bee or maybe a butterfly), you will have changed your settings to get a better exposure.
Gotcha! Yeah, I was thinking back to that day and I had just come out of the woods so my iso was naturally high and I saw the bee and just started shooting like crazy! 
I got a few good shots from it, but I think this one was my favorite because she looks so intense, like a pilot!
Vanessa: Welcome to NPN in general and to Macro in particular. I actually think your settings work pretty well, especially for a flight shot. Any slower SS is going to risk more subject motion blur. Here you have a little bit of detail in the wing and the details on the bee’s head look pretty sharp. I’ve offered an alternative crop for your consideration. Also, please resize your images to somewhere near 1500 pixels on the long side before posting. Posting full resolution images taxes the server a bit, makes your image a more inviting target for thieves and makes it impossible to see the entire image on most screens. Great to have you aboard and looking forward to more of your work. >=))>
I really like your crop! Thank you! Is it the original size just cropped down or did you do a specific ratio? I don’t know if that makes sense… Thank you for the advice about sizing I will do that from now on!
Vanessa: I just cropped to taste without a specific ratio in mind. I wanted the bee in the upper right quadrant and enough of the foliage to create the environment without competing with the bee.
Vanessa, welcome to NPN and macro. Your bee is nicely sharp with the various crop versions improving the viewing well. One thing to keep in mind when your cropping is what else might you want to do with the picture. If you might want to print it, then it’s best to use a “standard” size ratio, like 8.5 x 11, 4 x 5, or 1:1. Other ratios result in blank areas on the print or needing to use custom print sizes, which are considerably more expensive. The flower is just a bit to bright, 0.5 to 1.0 stop less exposure would fix that without changing the overall feeling of a bright, warm summer day.
Thank you! Yeah, I agree that flower in the front especially is bright but when I try to bring the exposure down more it makes the bee too dark. Could this be an example of an image beyond saving?
Vanessa: If you do an overall decrease in exposure the bee will go dark. This is where you need processing software that lets you adjust highlights and shadows independently. This is a very salvageable image.
