Color Challenge: Tuesday Orange -- Bumblebee on Buddleja
Okay, I did some research to identify this Bumblebee. I am pretty sure it is Bombus lapidarius. In Danish it is apparently called "Stenhumle" (sten means stone or rock, BTW). I was first looking my bee up on this site and that's what I thought it was, but decided I had to be wrong, since map didn't show it living in Denmark. So I finally made a login on a Danish site, which says it is common here and is observed in my area both before and after 2007. We have a couple different types of bumblebees frequenting our garden.
As for orange and these photos, I like both the dark orange on the end of the bee and the paler orange centers of the individual flowers of the yellow Buddleja. We only set this butterfly bush this year. We had a purple in the past, but it was destroyed when we redid our septic system last fall. So in the spring we got a blue and a yellow butterfly bush and put them a new place.
SONY DSC-HX400V
ISO 80
f/5
1/40th sec
Aperture priority mode (I swear I didn't set the ISO... it's been set to auto. I had no idea it was going THAT low. No wonder I had issues with speed on shots when I tried to increase the fstop.)
f/5, 1/60 sec. Everything else the same. Note to self: Set ISO to an intelligent level when it is threatening slow shutterspeeds... or surprisingly fast ones (yesterday morning it was shooting birds at 1/250 and a pretty good fstop. Turned it out used ISO 1000!)
f/5, 1/50sec. BTW, it does weird things with focal length. It says it is 4mm.... Sony's own program will tell me things like 4.3mm. But nothing equates those to the "normal" numbers. The lens is supposed to equate to something like 24-1200mm.
Again f/5, 1/50 sec, ISO 80.
Obviously f5 was rather low for shooting a bee like this. But I thought I had to with the low shutter speed issues. AARGH. Now I know next time to force ISO setting. I also need to play with the focal modes. I've been using the initial default, a wide pattern. I suspect I might have more luck getting it to focus on the right small thing if I swap it over to center when working on bugs, spiders, etc. The actual "how to use the camera" manual is only available online and it isn't very user-friendly, IMO. It is hard to find the info I want in it and not conducive to being read cover-to-cover as would be my normal initial reaction. Also my brain isn't what it used to be and some things just don't "stick" very well.
When I go to the US next month, a friend is also going to look at it a bit. She is top notch photographer with actual courses in her background. I'm only self-taught and it's been years and years since I used anything I learned from reading in my late teens and early twenties, so I've lost most of it.
Hello Rebecca. Your photos are great, and I like them very much. The humble is well photographed. You are a talented photographer. Thanks a lot for sharing.
I follow you now. @thunderland.
If you like my posts, just follow me and resteem and upvote my posts. @thunderland
Thank you for the praise on my photos and for a real and personal interaction. I suspect you are pretty new to steem. You might want to drop the last line when you comment on stuff. I'm telling you this to help you. If you interact intelligently, like you did, people will come check you out. But the asking for follows/resteems/upvotes isn't popular so that might negate it and get you less attention than you would just with your initial comment. I am going to check you out anyway, since you are new and probably didn't know. :-)
Great advice Bex
This bee is so interesting... it looks very different from the bees in Australia, which are the common European bees. I've never seen a bee like this before.
When I saw your ISO settings, I was thinking to myself that I've never seen an setting that low... and then I read your comments! Digital books are good for many things, but sometimes it is nice to have a "real" book that you can keep referring back to. My camera manual is full of post-it notes.
I can't even download it is a PDF file it looks like. Not the one with real info. :-(
You should be able to download a PDF... or is there a problem with reading pdf's on your device? Not having a camera manual would drive me bonkers!
Using the camera number you give in your post, I found this download (scroll down to Operating Instructions): https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/compact-cameras-dschx-series/dsc-hx400v
The PDF I could find was the basic point and shoot directions, not all the ins and outs of every setting. I will check that link on my laptop later... Rush now... But I suspect it's the basic one I did get on paper. It's the ins and outs of every setting I need and I only found them in a usable online version. A zillion individual webpages.
THANK YOU! Your link gave me the option to download a PDF of the "Help Guide," which is the manual I needed. I suspect mine had been going into the DK version and perhaps they haven't made the PDF on that, since I'd not been able to find it. I prefer English for myself anyway. Now I've got a PDF on my google drive, so I can load it onto my tablet and study it. THANK YOU!
That bug looks simply sensational :))
awesome bee shot. It came out great. I also have compact camera lumix lx3. It did confuse me. Thats why I not compare it to dslr exif info.
That is one adorable bee. Nice.
Awesome shots Bex.