# Ok. So you folks with great pictures, what are your secrets?



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

It is hard to say. Sometimes it is the angle of the lights.
I just put my 7.1 MP digi cam on Macro auto focus mode. It will
automatically adjust to the bee surrounding all on still pics anyways.
Does it has auto focus on yours too?


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## AvatarDad (Mar 31, 2016)

My camera has pretty good autofocus, but this particular lens was a real challenge. I had the same issue photographing bees on the landing board... the camera would get the hive in focus, but the bee would be a blur. I ended up focusing manually a few inches in front of the hive, and then shot 100 pictures hoping to get lucky. I didn't... they all stunk. 

I think more light (to solve the shutter speed issue) and a smaller F-stop (to fix depth of field). I'll have to figure how to do that. 

When you guys shoot a bee on a flower, how close are you? A foot? 3 feet?. My 200mm lens has a minimum of 1.4 meters, which was keeping me pretty far away.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

It depends because my main focus is to get the bees on cam while the oppty is still there. Within seconds the
bee will be gone. You have to be quick and get your cam ready on focus and snap away. Though usually I'll be within
2-5 feet from the bee and flower. Sometimes closer too just to get some good bee pics. You'll have to try it out in order to
find the proper distance and focal point. It took me quite some time to find my focus on my digi cam.


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## cohutt (Feb 13, 2017)

1. calm day- wind kills both manual and auto focus for me
2. tripod - just works out better than my less than steaady hands
3. remote shutter release (corded) keeps me from shaking tripod
4. sports mode or similar on camera- the one where it shoots like a machine gun several frames per second 
5. highest zoom lense you have @ max zoom 

with all this I take a lot of pictures then sift through them all and find I usually have a handful of decent ones and a bunch to delete. the multi frame mode inevitably catches one or more bees acting or moving in a way i would not be able to anticipate. 

The tripod and remote shutter release also let me take high res pics of frames during a hive inspection- I end up seeing more after the fact on my computer than i did "live" with 56 year old eyes lol. Set up correctly I am able to occasionally see mites on individual bees as well as eggs in the worst lighting conditions.


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## anthecologist (Sep 4, 2016)

I use a Nikon coolpix B700 most of the time. No tripod, no special lenses. The key is great weather, but very slow movement is also important. Also don't breathe on your subjects. It takes a lot of practice. And play with the settings until you get the desired result. I get good results from using the macro setting, as well as programmed auto aperture and shutter speed.


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