Today I was back in the garden with the bees. Thanks to a guy named Jimmy Daly at this website I learned how to solve the shutter speed problem I mentioned in a previous post. Evidently, Nikon sets the maximum shutter speed when using a flash at 1/250. That is not nearly fast enough to freeze the wings of a bee in flight. Mr. Daly has a great post on how to set the camera to override this default maximum flash sync speed.
This picture was taken at around 6:30 PM with my Nikon D7000 and a 105 mm macro lens with a ring flash system. The camera settings were f 9.0, 1/3200 and an iso of 1000, which is too high and caused a slightly grainy image. I was worried about the setting sun and the fading daylight. I should have just boosted the power of my flash a bit more and stayed with a lower iso, but I'm learning.
In the category of missed opportunities, while I was photographing the bees a bird flew into my bird bath not more than a few feet from where I was standing. The bird, splashing about, flapping her wings and generally having a great time, didn't seem to care about me at all. It would've been a cool video clip. So, tomorrow I will be in the garden with my camera on the bees and my video camcorder focused on the bird bath.
Monte