Plenty of Hornets around at the moment

With 'Lockdown 2' in full swing here in France, my photography is now limited to my garden, or a distance of just 1 km from home.......and for a maximum of 1 hour per day!

The recent bright weather has sent all the wildlife running for the hills, so thank goodness that we currently have a huge number of Hornets in the garden.  

It has given me the opportunity to shoot these fascinating creatures, both 'close up' with my 'macro' system (around 6" from them), and also to try out 'long-lens' (700mm) shots from around 12 feet!  Hornets are not renowned for being very friendly, so the opportunity to shoot them from a safe distance, certainly had its advantages.

The above images were taken 'hand-held', with my Nikon D500 body, Nikon 70-200 f4 lens, with Raynox DCR150 and Ring Flash attached  -  Shot from a distance of approx 4"

The next question, was could I capture similar shots from a safer distance, but with a 'non macro' lens.  -  Of course, it would not be possible to retain quite the same quality, but just how good would it be?

To find out, I switched to my Nikon 500mm f4 'prime' lens, with 1.4 teleconverter fitted. This gives me a working distance of 12 feet from the subject, but with a whopping 700mm lens!  It also adds around 4 kilos in weight, so the camera and lens, was set up on my tripod, to avoid camera shake and more importantly, save my arms!

As you can see, there is a difference, but I was still very impressed with the results.

Shooting from a distance, will never compare with close distance 'macro', but I was impressed with these results.

I also wanted to capture them 'in flight' and by using a longer lens, it allowed me a little more flexibilty, with regards to focusing techniques.  It's almost impossible to 'follow' the flight of a hornet, especially with a long and heavy lens, so I set up my camera and lens on my tripod and focused on a particular flower head.  All that I had to do now, was wait for a hornet to come close to that specific flower head and hope that it would 'fly in' on the same focus plane........after 6 hours, spread over 3 days and hundreds of 'out of focus' images, I finally succeeded in capturing these images.

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