Bugs are Demanding Models

It has been a while since I got my Sigma 105mm macro lens for my new Sony camera, and I still haven’t been able to accomplish much. It’s hard to get used to the controls, and the lens and camera, together, just seem hard to operate.

I went outside and looked around for macro opportunities, and as luck would have it, a big, fat carpenter bee started feeding on the blossoms on the weeds by my house. I ran over and started trying to capture him doing something interesting. It was pretty much impossible to focus in time to get a decent shot. I got one depressing picture of him flying out of the scene.

Later on, I saw some kind of wasp or bee on a blossom, and he was taking his time, so I didn’t have to chase him. I got all excited and tried to shoot him. Afterward, I realized I had forgotten to check the shutter speed and ISO. Here is the best picture I got, and this is AFTER a lot of doctoring. Of course, it’s slightly better at full size.

The exposure is horrendous, and it can’t be fixed.

Yesterday, I decided to try shooting in RAW format, and today I tried editing. I tried to photograph some lantana blossoms. I could not get a good sharp picture, and the photo seemed dark in spite of checking the exposure. I used Photoshop and Camera Raw to try to fix the picture up, but it’s still a mess. I only took one shot because I had to shoot from a very uncomfortable position.

I’ve been thinking maybe I got the wrong lens. The Sigma is heavy, and the best magnification you can get is 1x. A Youtube macro guy says the Laowa 58mm macro is the way to go. It’s small and light, and you can photograph things between one and three inches away, which makes life easier. It does 2x magnification, so you can get shots the Sigma won’t get.

I have a perfectly good APS-C Sigma macro lens for my old Rebel 350D, but I don’t want to spend the rest of the year taking 8MP pictures. When I first started thinking about getting better equipment, I assumed I would use my old lenses, and people said I should get a newer body that would fit them. They recommended the T7, also called the 2000D. It looked great compared to my 350D, but while I was researching it, I learned that DSLR’s are now obsolescent, so I didn’t go for it. I bought a mirrorless.

Today I started considering the T7 again. I found out the resale value on my old lenses is about enough to buy three pizzas, so selling them will not be very rewarding, and they are capable of very good work. I looked around, and I decided to pick up a used Canon SL2 body.

This body is considerably better than a T7. It’s lighter than my full frame. It does video. It has 24 megapixels. It will give me an excuse to keep my old camera bag. I can use it when I’m afraid to take the Sony out or when I travel to places where good cameras tend to get stolen.

Now I should be able to get some decent macro shots, one way or the other. Eventually, I should get somewhere with the Sigma on the Sony camera. Until then, I can produce some useful work with the Canon.

I have an external flash coming, along with a cheap flash diffuser. I learned that you need a fast shutter to do macro on anything that moves. Bugs flap fast. To get good lighting, you use a flash, and the diffuser prevents it from looking like, well, flash.

Working with raw files sounded intimidating, but it doesn’t seem too hard. It seems pretty much like fixing JPG’s in Photoshop Elements, but you have a wider range of adjustments, and you are a lot more likely to be able to save iffy shots.

Tomorrow my used Laowa 15mm zero-distortion lens gets here. That should be a lot of fun while traveling. We are hoping to go to Rome, and it sounds like the perfect lens for shooting inside old buildings. I don’t know what I’ll do with it here, though.

My wife should be here for good in as little as 5 weeks. It is possible I will meet her in another country and fly home with her. That would give us a lot of photo opportunities. She is very supportive of the whole thing, because like me, she has very, very few childhood pictures of herself. We want to do better.

Sorry for the lame pictures, but I am plugging away, and I expect better results before long.