Bees anyone...

[bbrigham]

I have yet to get a good sunset photo but got messing around with some Bees today.....damn size limit

, still got some hi-res though

 

[kide]

Brandon:
No bees here, but we're working on a good crop o' wasps....I took this handheld with my new Sony Alpha 300 and a 70-210 Sigma zoom (effective about 410MM) pushed all the way out. (I was about 150 feet away, thank you very much...)

 

[bbrigham]

That's about as close as I'd want to be to those, I haven't had a very friendly past with those....and yellow jackets.

I had the lens about 16" away from these, with the hi-res photos I have you can see the individual hairs on their bodies and the little specks of pollen on them. This is the first time I tried to get pics like that....think I'll be doing more of it. Got to look at the book on this Sony tonight the focus seems to be acting funny. It better be just a setting......

 

[kmcconaughey]

Kendell, just walk right up to that hive and give it a whack with a big stick... or maybe not!

Brandan, cool photos!

On Sunday afternoon, July 12th, while out in my garden I kept hearing many buzzing insects. At first I just thought it was normal bee and wasp activity on the weeds and wild flowers out in the field around the garden. A short time later I was up on the deck and I could really hear them and it was way too loud for normal bee/wasp activity. Fearing it was an angry hive of bald face hornets,

I got out my camera and binoculars and tried to figure out where it was coming from. Turns out it was a swarm of honey bees traveling through. Must have been a new queen split off from a hive.

First photo below was taken from about 75 feet away. The next two photos were taken from under the tree they were in. By the time I took these two photos they were calmed down. They were about 15 feet up in the tree. The mass of them was about 9" diameter and about 2.5 feet long! I took some video as well.

 

[jbaker]

all joking aside i had a paperwasp nest about the size of a beachball in a tree one day we had extreme high winds and some rain, i put a raincoat on stood on the up wind side and swung real hard with a 2x4 never saw them again key point is not to be down wind

 

[bbrigham]

so much for being just a setting, the auto focus is kaput

 

[aschumacher]

Brendan, your close up photos look fine for focus. Are you having a problem with far away stuff? Did the closeup feature turn itself off? How about the battery?? I have an old Sony, I'll see if anything in my book to help. A.

 

[bbrigham]

It's the contacts under the shutter button, it should focus when pressed halfway down. I actually took about 25 photos but they are the only ones that came out good. I'm going to go through the manual to read up on manually focusing it for now. At around $180 to fix it is almost half what we paid for it. I found a web site where a guy wrote a tutorial with pics explaining how to fix it. Between my gear head hands and some shaking from my back meds I may not attempt it. I'll decide this week some time...

 

[aschumacher]

Brendan, look in the book for 'fixed focus' setup. Its used to take pix thru windows, fences, nets and other things where the auto-focus could choke.

 

[aschumacher]

Correction in terminology..on a Sony camera what I was suggesting is known as 'Focus preset'. A.

 

[kide]

Brendan:
Does your Sony have a jack for an external shutter release? My previous camera (Mavica CD300) has a LANC jack and uses a nifty little shutter release that also allows you to power the camera up, control the zoom and snap pics.. The same release also works with our old Digital 8 camcorder...The reason I got it was the Mavica's shutter button got "sticky"...I finally got that cleared up after a couple of years, but I used the LANC controller a lot.

BTW - with time and patience (steady hands and a good binocular magnifying headset, too)you CAN fix a lot of camera problems. My Digital 8 CC power switch wore out after about 5 years (really poor design - made to wear out). I was ready to buy a new one - prices had dropped drastically, but I took it into the Sony repair station in Lansing and arranged for them to repair it - $180.00 plus parts.. The next day I happened to be back in the same part of town, and stopped in; I asked how much the switch was - $31.00 - and they had one in stock (no surprise there). I canceled the service,took it home and broke out the jewelers screwdrivers and in about three hours (mostly trying to figure out how the two halves of the case locked together), I had the new switch in. Worst problem with most stuff like this (ink jet printers are the same way) is how the cases snap together. The screws are the size of dots of pepper and in the camcorder, I think I pulled over fifty of 'em..

 

[bbrigham]

Kendall...no jack on this one. I wish it did though as that would be a nice addition anyhow. I am considering doing the fix anyhow. My biggest problem is my hands. One of my meds for my back is a narcotic and have gotten some unwanted side effects from it, like sometimes my hands get to shaking especially when I'm really trying to concentrate on some precision work. I get quite frustrated with it. Still I can't justify the cost they want to charge to fix it. If worse comes to worse I'll save up for a Nikon or Cannon.
Here's a link to the repair...
http://focussonydsch.blogspot.com/

about halfway down it's English

 

[kide]

Brendan:

"you have to be delicated with excessive forces"

I've got to admire any guy that will take on not only fixing a camera, but posting how to do it online, not only in his native language, but a foreign one as well!!!

 

[aschumacher]

I like his comment at the end...
This mending(<font size="-2">repair</font>) is forever too...At least while the camera is working...

Now thats confidence !