Originally posted by potsmoker Phosphene,
Thank you for Very informative reply. It really helped to sort things out.
So, all these staggering exposures were made without a support (tripod) or just that one with an ash borer was made handheld? Hope one day I will be able to do something similar. As for now, I just want to buy all necessary equipment to be fully prepared when spring finally arrives.
All of these last shots I posted the other day were hand-held. Even the stack was done hand-held since I had something to brace myself up against.
About the only time I use a tripod now is for when I am doing a serious stack of a subject that I am sure will not move (ice crystals and what not) and when I am shooting HDR landscape shots I use a tripod. I primarily like the freedom of shooting hand-held because for one, I can snap many angles of certain subjects, and I can just pick up and move onto whatever the next subject will be that I may find. Always packing a tripod was tiresome and more often than not I would get exhausted just fighting the damn legs of it which would get caught in heavy grass or weeds.
Granted, tripod shots are a heck of a lot more stable and end up being sharper but with practice you can learn to steady yourself enough to grab most shots. I am also always running a shutter speed of 1/180th of a sec which is plenty fast enough for me on limiting blur.
Your first several outings doing this will be frustrating as Hades. It just takes practice and patience as well as learning how to approach certain insects without frightening them off since you will be shoving a camera lens that probably looks like a big bird beak to them, into their faces.
Sometimes I use a ring flash but most often it is just an external flash with a cheap fotodiox attachment.