Help needed: Tracking bees in flight

[Frank Fremerey]

In short words:

1) I shoot bee portraits for honey pot labels since 2007 (I have the labels printed and delivered to the bee-keepers), I get money and honey for the work & it is a lot of fun

2) Now by sheer chance I discovered that sometimes I can track down the bee in flight, also capture some landing operations and the like.

3) Now that I found it can be done accidentally I want to do it more and more intentionally. The Physics limits of the task:



plus of course I need a short time because bees tend to move fast erratically and sometimes unintentionally with the wind. Not a big thing given enough light and cranking up the ISO which is no problem with modern FF-Cameras

4) What I currently do is employ 3D-tracking, then saving the setting and trying to move with the bee in parallel. Not a very high yield though.

5) What I do not want is to intervene with the bees life to push her of the track she is on. I want to picture genuine bee's life, to learn about the little animals by watching how they behave relatively undisturbed.

Any suggestion to improve my shooting "bees in flight" is greatly appreciated...

(some examples posted later, visitors in the door)

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Have you looked at IR releases. I mean those devices that trigger a camera when a reflected IR beam is interrupted. To make it even more reliable, connect two in series with their beams crossed.  Focus the camera onto the intersection point. Then, just hook up your camera to an AC/DC power source, activate the camera and go away to enjoy coffee or friend's company.

You can return hours later and hopefully have a lot of well exposed, sharp images.

[Frank Fremerey]

typical scene, two halfway sharp images in the set, all SOOC JPEGs for demo purpose only:

[Frank Fremerey]

Bjørn: Where should I put the IR-Auto-Release? for a scene like this?

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Anywhere you want for the pictorial outcome, but probably just slightly in front of a given flower. If the bees arrive in random directions sooner or later they will trigger the release. Do set up with a flash (preferably, run off the mains) so you can get the bee sharp not only the flowers.

[Frank Fremerey]

OK, this will make for a single perfect frame of the flight, but not for the "flight operation" or landing operation. I have tracked bees through unsharp series which perform unusual things like sucking from a flower and the performing a backwards start operation.

Is there an autofocus system with a touch screen that allows to mark an object to be tracked?

[Bjørn Rørslett]

You could just let the camera rip at max. speed? Or initiate a video capture?

[Gary]

I haven't any expertise in this ... but, while it is definitely unwieldy, a frame/box extending out from the lens with zone focus or even the IR trigger hooked up ... may have potential. When the bee is in the frame/box, it is in the focus plane.   

[Frank Fremerey]

Video capture with focus tracking a DOF of 0.8mm and an object that is roughly 1.5cm long and moving at 7cm/s?

For relief I dig into the archives for some real goodies.

Currently the only recipe seems to be "waste more film"

If we break down the problem rationally we have the following:

1) extremely shallow depth of field, less than one mm
2) small target zone, hopefully the "face" of the bee not the "ass"
3) speed of movement about two orders of magnitude above the DOF size (0.7 vs. 70)
4) wind moving background objects too
5) possible camera shake too

[Frank Fremerey]

http://www.noldus.com/innovationworks/products/track3d/track3d-how-it-works

A little googleing brought a pro solution possible not usable in the wild life garden

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Apparently that setup catered more for recording the movements of the animal rather than its appearance.

[Frank Fremerey]

http://ZENTRALKRAFT.COM/landing_OP.jpg

here is a nice series in which I nearly nailed it (~35MB) all in a time frame of half a second

[Frank Fremerey]

http://fotokontext.de/ZENTRALKRAFT/starting_OP.jpg

And a starting OP with "timecode"

off for family

[Andrea B.]

Cognisys Stopshot
https://www.cognisys-inc.com/products/stopshot/stopshot.php

[Frank Fremerey]

Sounds great