Midge Challenge - Day 3

Having worked out that in order to capture flying midges, I needed to set a steady focus point with a reasonable depth of field, I set off down to the river, where at any time after about 5.00pm at this time of year, on a warm day you will find midges buzzing about just above the water level. However, this time I went fully equipped with a tripod, remote control, a depth of field table, a camera which can take up to 8 frames a second and a 70-200mm lens. I set a high film speed 800 ASA and an aperture of f8 which allowed me some depth of field and a shutter speed varying between 1/500 -1/640 of a second.

What I did not account for was that at about 7.00pm there is maximum pedestrian traffic along the riverside path, including dog walkers who were encouraging their dogs to run or swim along in the river thereby muddying the water and disturbing the midges. The world and his wife wanted to know what the heck I was photographing with my lens pointed at the river. Maybe a Jaws Inflatable Shark would have satisfied their curiosity.

In the quiet periods when the water had settled and the midges returned I was able to shoot off several sequences in the middle of the river and near the bank. I could not easily check what I was getting as with the pointed downwards it is almost impossible to see the LCD because of the bright light getting to it. I just knew that in theory and if I had got the maths right (dof issues) I should have at leastone or two reasonable images. And so it transpired out of the 200 or more shots I had taken there were maybe two or three usable images. I have chosen one which has multiple midges on it as otherwise I was tempted to blow the picture up too high ( adding to the noise problem ) Having shot at 800ASA I found I needed to use a noise reduction programme in post production to make the images acceptable. The shots I yook from further away ie. in the middle of the river were best as the depth of field was so much greater.

Was it worth taking on the challenge ? Although I did not notice while I was shooting, I must say, I did become quite itchy when processing the images and seeing the midges. I guess there will be other small things buzzing about that I might want to photograph which might be more photogenic and trying out these techniques is therefore good practice. So I suggest you think twice before deciding to copy other blippers images as we all know the greatest burden of blipping is the obsessions it induces.

Look LARGE at your peril !