To bring you up to date I have spent the summer refining my MACRO Rigs
to maximize hand held stability. I have achieved my goal with the
following Rigs or Setups:
1. Canon 100mm Macro with 2X Teleconverter and Canon MT24EX Twin Flash
attached to a Cullman Shoulder Pod with a Bogen 486RC2 Ball head. (this
has proved to be a super flexible and stable Rig in the field).
2. Sigma 105mm Macro (same as above)
3. Sigma 150mm Macro and the same Rig as above but also works with a Mono Pod for even more stability as it is a heavier Lens/Rig.
After spending the summer shooting and testing I can recommend all the
above set ups. These along with correct breathing you can achieve super
sharp images that are correctly exposed and require minimal post
processing.
I chose as my subjects the many varieties of Flies to follow, stalk and
capture. I wanted to capture as much of their life cycle as possible
using the Henri Fabre, "Life of the Fly" as my basic guide. It has been
fun and has provided a number of moments of humor and astonishment. The
only thing that I have not done yet is capture a Fly in flight, and that
is a real challenge!
As soon as I have prepped the images for posting to the web, I will share some of the results.
For most if not all Macro Bug captures you must be prepared to have 
patience and the ability to do slow stalking of the subject. To this end
you should read up on the basic habits of your subjects so that you are
able to anticipate 
where your subject will be and what it may be doing
at any given moment.
One of my Fly subjects that I found appeared to have a growth or
parasite attached to its eye. Very curious as I also captured one early
on that was scratching its eye to the point of moving it completely out
of the socket exposing what looked to be a small centipede type
parasite. I will post both of these soon as prepped.
Some of the Life Habits that I have viewed and captured are Mating,
Excreting, Blowing Bubbles, Laying Eggs,Etc.
All extremely fascinating
and educational. I would like to capture all of the activity that H.
Fabre documented in his book "Life of the Fly".
Well enough for now. I will be posting images very soon to illustrate
what I have discussed.
Good Bug Hunting.
Carole Blatchley
Photographer/Fine Artist
athoskat@comcast.net
carolecb@mac.com
http://www.carolebanksimages.com
http://www.athosimageworks.com
http://athosimageworks.blogspot.com//
http://urbanstreet.blogspot.com/
