Lavender, all bee'd out...
The Lavender next to the driveway has lost all its blooms, but the bees and moths are still foraging on it.
I have been working on creating a good macro setup for over a year; I think I finally have one that is as close to flawless as I can afford. It uses a machine vision lens, which provides very high resolution. Here is a 100% enlargement of a small portion of the full image:
I’m not 100% sure why a macro shot shows details that we miss with the naked eye, like all those fine hairs on the buds. They look more colorful in real life; maybe it’s the strong lighting, or they only resolve when you magnify.
As you can see, the flower portion has wilted; I imagine that the remaining scent I can smell is attracting the insects, even though there’s nothing left in the way of food or need for pollination.
Here’s a photograph of my ‘final’ setup:
The black background is made with a stiff board and some ultra-black coating. I bought the coating (in sheet form) from a major optical company; it’s extremely non-reflective. I used a ring light to illuminate the subjects, and it’s very bright. No reflection from the ultra-black.
I use a bellows camera because it gives me a huge range of possible focus distances. I can get in really close with the lens and expands the bellows for focus, which gives me significant magnification, or I can back off the lens and compress the bellows for larger subjects.
I plan to experiment with flash and other types of lighting to improve this a wee bit, but the hard work is now done; it works.