Macro Photography – Hoverfly with Pollen

Early last year I bought myself a Tamron 90mm 1:1 macro lens for my Pentax K-r. Subsequently I upgraded the K-r to a K-5 and the image above is one of the first which I took with this combination.

It’s taken at quite a high iso and this is because the picture was taken using the unique feature of the Pentax K-5, which is the ability to set the shutter speed and the aperture and let the camera adjust the iso to get the correct exposure. Now I have the K-5 I often use this setting for Macro shots because I can control both the depth of field, and make sure the shutter speed is fast enough that I don’t get camera shake whilst hand holding the camera. As long as the Auto ISO setting is within sensible limits and the available light is reasonable you can rely on the K-5’s excellent low noise performance to give good quality pictures.

This image was one of a series which I took of this hoverfly just emerging from the petals of the flower. The image was taken in RAW and processed in Lightroom 4.2. The rest of the images I took that day are on my flickr photostream.