How to photograph insects?

The daily life photos, travel photos and landscape photos we take are more of an intake process, and the photographer himself is rarely involved. Macro insect photography needs more skills and participation, and the process is much more interesting. For example, you can see how dragonflies riot and prey like bombers; How romantic butterflies in the grass mate; Flowers shuttle through it. How busy bees are collecting pollen. In the sun, you can see insects emitting metallic luster or burning flames. Nature is magical and beautiful, and moving stories are staged all the time, depicting beautiful moments. Shooting insects is an excellent way to get close to nature. Compared with traditional cameras, using digital cameras to shoot insects has several obvious advantages: because the main body of this macro photography is dynamic insects, the success rate is low, and the low-cost advantage of digital cameras is outstanding; Nowadays, many civil digital cameras have the function of macro photography. By adding close-ups and iron rings, it is simpler and more convenient than traditional photography. Traditional cameras pay attention to magnification in macro photography, and whether digital cameras have enough pixels is the key. It is generally believed that the suitable distance for insect photography is about 30cm- 120cm, which is mainly due to the vigilance against insects. So telephoto shooting in this environment is very important. Cameras such as Canon PRO 90IS and OLIMPUS2 100 all have a zoom of 10, which is really a weapon to capture the wonderful moments of insects. However, these two cameras have no macro function, so the size of the insects they shoot is limited, and the size of the subject is roughly equivalent to that of a small butterfly, or you need to consider configuring a close-up lens. If you want to shoot smaller insects, such as ladybugs, you'd better choose a digital camera with macro function. In this kind of macro photography, we often need to cut the image, so it is very important to have enough pixels. One more thing, insect photography IS usually carried out in the wild, and tripod is not allowed in many cases, and the use of telephoto inevitably requires a long shutter time, so it is necessary to choose a digital camera with IS (Image Stabilizer System) function. The key to the success of macro insect photography is the high definition of the subject, which is also the biggest difficulty. Mainly related to focusing, my experience: in macro photography, the automatic focusing of the camera is almost unreliable, so the first step you have to do is to learn to skillfully use the digital manual focusing in your hand. As far as the mainstream civil digital cameras on the market are concerned, manual focusing is very clumsy. It takes time to accumulate experience to do this first step well. Only in this way can you have a chance to stay calm when capturing wonderful shots. When focusing, the choice of focus should fall on the insect's eyes, because you are taking macro photography, which is very important. The usual practice is to combine the spot metering of insect heads, which is done in more than 90% of photos. In daily photography, we usually use the method of locking the focus and then translating the camera to re-compose. However, in macro photography, even a small displacement may cause out-of-focus and lead to the failure of the whole photo, so what can be avoided is avoided, so generally speaking, we prefer to adopt the method of post-cropping. There is almost no real optical SLR in civil digital cameras, and the electronic lens pickup is limited by resolution, which often deceives your eyes. Therefore, if the "bug friend" you are aiming at is willing to cooperate, you must make full use of the opportunity and take as many photos as possible. In order to highlight the main body and blur the messy background, large aperture and high magnification zoom are often used. As for exposure compensation, the use of flash and other skills, we should analyze specific problems and not discuss them in detail. In summer, the peak of insect activity is after the rain clears, and at this time, because of the rain on the wings, the activity frequency of small insects is obviously slowed down, and the lighting conditions are ideal, which is indeed the best time to shoot. Some insect photographers believe that sunrise in the morning is also an ideal time, based on the fact that after a long night, the body temperature of insects begins to rise, and they usually come out to move, and the dew in the morning slows down their activities. The oblique sunlight in the morning is a brilliant light for photographers. It is difficult for home digital cameras to perform well only in low light conditions. Digital camera has high saturation and high definition under strong light, large aperture and high shutter. A friend said that I also want to photograph insects, but every time I fly over, I get close. Insect photography, patience is as important as luck, and it is common to get nothing in an afternoon. In fact, it is not difficult to get close to them as long as they are not overly frightened. I once played butterflies for a while. Butterflies are dancing among the flowers, and each flower is only stop for a minute. But I found that they still had a certain trajectory, so I took the method of waiting for him, focusing on measuring a flower in advance, and firing as soon as the prey entered the range. Unfortunately, I am not a butterfly, and the result is often empty. Meeting this opportunity is the best time to shoot dragonflies. As long as you approach slowly, you will get something.