Blessed Lunar New Year (10 Feb 2024)

Here Wishing Everyone A Blessed Lunar New Year!

 

Morning Walk At Windsor Nature Park (09 Feb 2024)

 The weather looks great so I decided to go to Windsor Nature Park to test out my modification of my macro setup. The issue of the loose hot shoe prompted me to mount my flashlight by the side. This makes manual focusing a challenge due to the weight imbalance and putting a strain on my right hand. Nevertheless, the setup works and I am able to get a much deeper depth-of-field because of the flashlight. 

Although the weather was dry when I set off, the place looked pretty wet and looked like it rained not too long before I arrived at the place. As expected, the number of beetles encountered on this trip was pathetic.

The first beetle was this 10 mm Net-winged Beetle lookalike that I am still not able to have an identity on. Do leave a comment if you know the identity of this beetle.

Net-winged Beetle ~ 10 mm

Leaf Beetle ~ 5 mm

Although the number of beetles encountered was pathetic due to the wet weather, the trip gave a good field test of my macro setup. Guessed that I will need to tweak my setup more.

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. :)

Night Walk At Lower Peirce Reservoir Park (27 Oct 2023)

 It has been a very long time since I last did any night macro photography. Taking the opportunity that I have some in-between time in the night, I decided to go to the Lower Peirce Reservoir Park to test out my simplified macro setup (Morning Walk At Lower Peirce Reservoir (14 Oct 2023)) under night conditions.

After some fumbling (yes, it has been a while), I finally got use to the new setup and managed to take some photographs at the place. Here's a shot of a commonly encountered small butterfly in Singapore (Lesser Grass Blue (Zizina otis lampa)). 

Leaf Beetle ~ 4 mm

Chafer Beetle ~ 10 mm

Darkling Beetle ~ 10 mm

Darkling Beetle (Amarygmus metallicus) ~ 8 mm

Sap Beetle ~ 3 mm

Ground Beetle (Catascopus facialis) ~ 15 mm

Darkling Beetle (Cryphaeus gazella) ~ 10 mm

Darkling Beetle ~ 15 mm

Although this was a short trip (about 1 hour), I am pleasantly surprise to be able to find a good number of beetles.  After looking at the photographs, I will need to tweak my macro set up to add a diffuser to prevent the hotspot caused by the flash. Until the next time...