Sleeping bee
Here's a small bee I found in my back yard. I was searching for ballooning spiderlings that sometimes land on small pine trees and saw several small brown "things" stuck on the end of needles of several trees. Looking closely, they appeared to be small dead bees, similar to what's left after a jumping spider dines on one. They had the "dead bug" look... legs folded up underneath. I gently poked one and was surprised when it suddenly flew away. Viewing another through the viewfinder I could see that it was grasping the needle with its mandibles and just hanging off the end with its legs folded up. Checking a half dozen others scattered around my yard I noticed that all had hold of the needles near the end and their body unsupported.
Taken with an Olympus OM-D E-M1 mark II, 60mm f/2.8 macro lens, focused at infinity, with the objective from a Soligor 90-230mm zoom lens reverse mounted on the 60mm, lighting provided by a small external flash shot through a lens-mounted diffuser made from the plastic bowl that comes in a frozen dinner.
In experimenting with the macro lens I found that focusing at 1:1 "eats" light, something I hate to put up with. By focusing at infinity and getting to 1:1 using a supplemental lens, there's no loss of light. Using a variety of different supplemental lenses I can boost the magnification to about 5:1. It's a very good thing that the camera has image stabilization.
AC-27669
Sleeping bee
Here's a small bee I found in my back yard. I was searching for ballooning spiderlings that sometimes land on small pine trees and saw several small brown "things" stuck on the end of needles of several trees. Looking closely, they appeared to be small dead bees, similar to what's left after a jumping spider dines on one. They had the "dead bug" look... legs folded up underneath. I gently poked one and was surprised when it suddenly flew away. Viewing another through the viewfinder I could see that it was grasping the needle with its mandibles and just hanging off the end with its legs folded up. Checking a half dozen others scattered around my yard I noticed that all had hold of the needles near the end and their body unsupported.
Taken with an Olympus OM-D E-M1 mark II, 60mm f/2.8 macro lens, focused at infinity, with the objective from a Soligor 90-230mm zoom lens reverse mounted on the 60mm, lighting provided by a small external flash shot through a lens-mounted diffuser made from the plastic bowl that comes in a frozen dinner.
In experimenting with the macro lens I found that focusing at 1:1 "eats" light, something I hate to put up with. By focusing at infinity and getting to 1:1 using a supplemental lens, there's no loss of light. Using a variety of different supplemental lenses I can boost the magnification to about 5:1. It's a very good thing that the camera has image stabilization.
AC-27669