Bug hunting

I didn't get much sleep last night, so it wasn't until nearly 9am that I got up. By the time I'd had a shower etc. even granny had had breakfast before me! Luckily Ben was very good and waited for me so we could have our breakfast together.

In the morning I arranged an RMA with ebuyer, they will come and pick it up tomorrow. I had to pack the drive safely, so I put it in a jiffybag in a box and filled the boc with padding. I used the polystyrene/corn foam bits, so I had to get some out of the ex-stick insects tank in Ben's room and there was a little polystyrene ball in there with a face and some matchsticks for arms or maybe legs and a feather, Ben said it's name was Lil' annoyer and it's job was to annoy Maccy.

I did some more research on the Sigma 500mm f/4.5 lens. I was planning to walk to the fields near the Leisure centre today, to see if there were lots of butterflies there, but although the day started very sunny it was cloudy and overcast by about 10am. I went in the garden and did some macros. Its been very windy here lately and it wasn't very windy, which was good for macro.

I copied all the pics to my PC and then it was lunch. After lunch I started sorting the pics, then I decided to do the same walk I did yesterday and see if there would still be butterflies around even when its not sunny. I also took all my camera stuff.

I found there weren't as many butterflies around, although there were loads of flies. There were still quite a few butterflies in the rough area though. I stayed there a bit and tried to get some photos of them.

I found my photo setup (18-70 with 20mm extension tubes and shoe mounted SB800 with my cardboard 'flash funnel' didn't work very well though - at higher magnifications the flash didn't reach the subject enough, and often the top would be overexposed while the bottom would be dark. Really I think I need a ringflash style flash that's based on the lens to get good pics. On a sunny day I might be able to get good pics without flash, although may need to up the iso a bit.

Also a lot of butterflies were in inaccessible places e.g. on plants behind nettles or flew off when you got near them. I tried waiting by flowers for some to come along, but this wasn't very successful, I think you'd need to wait for a long time.

I also found my bag (Slingshot 300AW) was quite heavy when loaded up to go just on one shoulder. Since I had to put the bag down and open it up to get my stuff out anyway, the 'slingshot' point of the bag wasn't useful. In future I'd probably be better off using the Aldi/Lidl photo backpack Rad got me when taking lots of equipment that doesn't need to be accessed quickly.

When I got home I sorted and processed the pics.

After dinner I finished sorting and processing the pics (although not filing them with the pictures, they're still all in 'needs sorting' at the momentre. I also won an auction for an MP-E lens, £410 inc. p&P, 2nd hand with no box or instructions or anything. I didn't bid on the Sigma 500mm 1:4.5 because it went over £1000. I'm kinda glad since I don't do much bird shooting at the moment, although I'd like to. (Phew that was close, I had the side off my PC and I just put it back on before a moth could fly inside it). Even though its several thousands pounds more, the canon 500mm f/4 IS may be better since it would work well with a TC and the IS would be helpful for handholding. Anyway, hopefully I won't be spending a lot of money on a super telephoto for a while yet.

About 8.30pm I went in the garden and did some macros, found some ants farming aphids, which was interesting since I was showing Ben the weekly macro thread in the dpreview canon lens forum this morning, which has a pic of an 'aphid farm' in it. I copied the pics to my comp and sorted them into folders, but haven't gone through them to delete the really rubbish ones yet.

Also, I forgot to say yesterday but I got an email from photoshelter to say my pics had been reviewed, I was expecting some would be rejected this time, but actually they were all okay and I even got 2 or 3 editors choice for some of the macro pics! Whoohoo! Now I just need to keyword etc them all! And find out how to take a good landscape pic worthy of editors choice! And submit some more pics! And stop using exclamation marks at the end of sentances.

Any whey, I'm going to bed now byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Food
Breakfast: Crunchy nut cornflakes; cup o' tea.
Lunch: 2x Cheese on toast; lettuce; satsuma; ½ banana; caramel rocky; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Chicken & veg pie; carrots; peas; potatoes. Pudding was victoria sponge sandwich cake (sandwiched with jam although I'm not sure what flavour).
Supper-ten-crupper: Dark Chocolate digestive; shortcake biscuit; cup o' tea.