Afternoon Walk At Windsor Nature Park (27 Jan 2024)

 The weather today looks sunny and hot, so I decided to take a walk at the Windsor Nature Park to test out my flash-less macro photography setup.

Tiger Beetle (Cicindela aurulenta) ~ 15 mm

Pintail Beetle (Mordella fasciata) ~ 15 mm

Fungus Weevil ~ 10 mm

Fungus Beetle ~ 10 mm

Fungus Weevil ~ 10 mm

Fungus Beetle ~ 10 mm

The trip was not too fruitful as the number of beetles encountered was not as expected. At the same time, the photographs were not particularly sharp and the depth-of-field was very narrow. Guessed that I will need to look for a small flash gun for future trips.

Night Walk At MacRitchie Reservoir Park (26 Jan 2024)

 The weather for the past several weeks have been wet and it was to my surprise that it didn't rain a single drop for the entire day. Taking opportunity of the dry weather, I decided to go for a macro photography session. As I did not go to the MacRitchie Reservoir Park for quite a long while, so I decided to go there this time round.

My macro photography setup over the years has always been mounting the big external flash gun from my previous Sony DSLR to my Sony A6000. Little did I realize that the weight of the flash gun has taken a toll on the flash mounting of my Sony A6000. The flash mount finally became loose and the flash  trigger became very unreliable, sometimes can flash and sometimes doesn't. This is extremely irritating especially when you thought you have gotten a good angle and framing but failed to take a good photo because the flash didn't trigger.

For this trip, I decided to go without flash and depends solely on a circular led light that I mounted next to the camera. The reason for not mounting the circular light in front of the lens is to avoid the harsh circular hotspot. The idea of using the led light seemed like a good idea until I realize that I am sacrificing the deeper depth-of-field because of the larger aperture required, something that I have long forgotten because of the use of flash all these while. Because of this, appreciate your understanding that some of the photographs shown here have very shallow depth-of-field.

Here's a photograph of an attractive looking millipede. 

Darkling Beetle ~ 10 mm

Darkling Beetle (Ceropria superba) ~ 10 mm

Beetle Larvae ~ 20 mm

Darkling Beetle ~ 10 mm

Darkling Beetle ~ 10 mm [First-Time-Encounter]

Darkling Beetle ~ 15 mm

Beetle Larvae ~ 10 mm

Fungus Weevil ~ 5 mm

Ground Beetle (Onypterygia longispinis) ~ 25 mm

Chafer Beetle (Adoretus compressus) ~ 10 mm

The trip was surprisingly fruitful with a number of beetles encountered even though I was not expecting much from the trip. The lesson from this trip is that I will still need to use flash for macro photography so as to deepen the field-of-depth, albeit a much lighter and smaller flash.

Afternoon Walk At Windsor Nature Park (6 Jan 2024)

 The weather for the past weeks have been rainy, nevertheless I took the chance to go for my long awaited macro photography session at the Windsor Nature Park. When I was there the sky was overcast and seemed like it will likely to rain later part of the day. 

Here's something that most people would miss when they visit our parks - moss. Honestly, mosses do looks beautiful when zoomed in.

Beetle Larvae

Ground Beetle (Catascopus dalbertisi) ~ 25 mm 

Beetle Larvae

Ambrosia Beetles' burrows

Leaf Beetle (Hoplosaenidea singaporensis) ~ 5 mm

I am not sure of the identification of this beetle as some said it is a Firefly and others said it is Net-winged Beetle. What do you say it is?

Handsome Fungus Beetle (Stenotarsus pardalis) ~ 5mm

The trip was surprisingly fruitful given the wet weather and vegetations. Looking back at the photographs, there are still a lot of room for improvements for my new lightweight camera setup. Hopefully I can have more regular sessions in 2024. :)