I caught this picture after I put my son on the bus.

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa192/Zillasplace/bee.jpg

It's overcast outside so it's the perfect time to get the camera out. My complaint with this picture is the bee came out fuzzy.

Any tips of how I can fix this for future busy bee pictures?

Any tips of how I can fix this for future busy bee pictures?

It looks like your depth of field (the area of the photo that is in focus) is very small/shallow, indicating a wide-open aperture (f4 or lower). It blurs out the background and foreground quite nicely, and the flower is in sharp focus.

The bee, however, looks to be within that same depth of field and should be as clear as the flower so I'm going to guess that you were shooting at a slow shutter speed (1/125th of a second or slower). The lag in the shutter speed would make the bee's movement blur it. I'd bump the shutter speed up to 1/250th - 1/500th and maybe open the aperture one more stop (f2.8 if you can) to compensate.

The hard part will be convincing the bee to stick around. :p

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa192/Zillasplace/bee.jpg



Any tips of how I can fix this for future busy bee pictures?

Smaller F/stop [bigger number] if it's a plane of focus issue. If it's the bee moving then a faster shutter speed.

I'm having trouble figuring out if the bee is so far ahead of the flower that he is out of focus. Or if it's movement blur. Sorry

It looks like your depth of field (the area of the photo that is in focus) is very small/shallow, indicating a wide-open aperture (f4 or lower). It blurs out the background and foreground quite nicely, and the flower is in sharp focus.

The bee, however, looks to be within that same depth of field and should be as clear as the flower so I'm going to guess that you were shooting at a slow shutter speed (1/125th of a second or slower). The lag in the shutter speed would make the bee's movement blur it. I'd bump the shutter speed up to 1/250th - 1/500th and maybe open the aperture one more stop (f2.8 if you can) to compensate.

The hard part will be convincing the bee to stick around. :p

Thanks M@.

I guess I need to go bug hunting and practice. :)

You could also increase the shutter speed and increase the ISO speed to compensate, rather than increase shutter speed and lower the aperture one stop. That way you'd keep the same depth of field, but you might lose a little sharpness in the image, depending on how good your camera is. My SLR does spectacularly good photos even at ISO 1600 :D

I've got a Cannon Rebel XTi, so I can play with settings as much as I want. I also have a 75-300 mm 1:4 - 5.6 lense which is what I used to get the picture that is posted.

We have lots of wasps around that I could practice shoot on, but they're not as nice as the bee this morning. He or she could have cared less that I was even around. The wasps on the other hand are on a feeding frenzy this time of year so just to go near any flowers in the yard at this point is just asking for problems. I either have to get outside really early in the morning before it warms up, or really late in the afternoon.

Thanks for the help.