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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Flight shots (1 Viewer)

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Paul Corfield

Well-known member
Insects in flight is pretty tough but worth persevering with as the results can be pretty good. At this time of the year we get lots of Drone flies in the garden. They are a type of Hoverfly and they occupy a small space, especially when the sun is out and they just sit there and hover. You only get about a second or two for the photo as they constantly dart off and intercept anything that flies within their airspace. Generally they come back to the same spot though. This will test your focusing abilities to the absolute limit but it's good fun.

For these I have about 150mm extension between camera and scope so that I can focus down to around 6 feet if needs be. These images were taken at roughly around 12 feet. No teleconverters were used.

Paul.
 

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Absolutely brilliant. I have trouble with the bigger feathered creatures that fly so I think I will give a miss for time being. I suppose if you master this sort of photography then BIF would be a doddle
 
Remarkable, I never would have thought it possible to get such good results with a rig like yours. I'm puzzled by the lighting, though: in sun against a dark background?
 
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Wow,...okay. You need to share a bit on how you go about this. Manual focus is one thing but how to capture that with your scope on top of it. I am puzzled..impressed but puzzled :) jim
 
Thanks for the comments guys.

Fugl - the background is in shade plus it's about 30 feet behind the actual insect. The background in the first one was the base of a conifer hedge so it was dark to begin with. I'm shooting at a fairly fast shutter speed which just darkens the background some more. In the second image there was a brown fence about 25 feet behind the insect which is far enough to give the super soft bokeh.

Imans - There's nothing to it really. I look at where the insect is hovering, aim the scope, focus and press the camera shutter. It takes practice but I can do all that in literally less than a couple of seconds. The scope is already pre focused to roughly the distance I'm aiming for so you only need to adjust for the insect drifting around in the wind. Aiming takes practice but I find I can just point the scope at anything and it will be in the viewfinder. I've taken thousands of images through the scope so it's all second nature now.

Paul.
 
Here's one of an insect called a Bee Fly that I took a couple of weeks ago. I wasn't all that happy with the light but shooting against the sky lets you get the shutter speed high enough to freeze the wings. This was taken from around 30 feet range with the Antares 1.6X barlow (gives 2.3X on the scope).

Paul.
 

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Cheers guys.

Here's the last couple I'll post. Had much less blustery wind this week which meant the hoverflies stayed a lot more static. They still dart off all over the place but weren't being buffeted around by the wind and this allowed better focus.

Paul.
 

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Those shots are amazing. I'll have to try this myself.

What's the image quality like at 100%? I've photographed butterflies and dragonflies (stationary ones!) from about nine feet with the TV60 and the tiny DOF doesn't give much margin for error.

Mark
 
markkilner said:
Those shots are amazing. I'll have to try this myself.

What's the image quality like at 100%? I've photographed butterflies and dragonflies (stationary ones!) from about nine feet with the TV60 and the tiny DOF doesn't give much margin for error.

Mark
Click to expand...

Here's a 100% crop from one today and then a wider crop. This is about the best shot I've got so far and range was only about 10 feet. The closer you try and photograph something then the shallower the depth of field will be.

Paul.
 

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