This article features a selection of handheld images of wasps in flight captured with the M.Zuiko PRO 40-150 mm f/2.8 zoom lens. All of the photographs featured in this article were captured at the Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG) during a 1/2 hour period.
NOTE: Click on images to enlarge.

Some people find photographing wasps and bees a bit unnerving. This can be especially true in the late summer when wasps can become more aggressive than usual.

The summer was quickly slipping away from me before I realized that I hadn’t dedicated any time this year to photographing wasps in-flight. So, I decided to head off to the Royal Botanical Gardens with the hopes of finding a good number of wasps.

Although I have an ‘insect kit’ that I had done some testing with earlier in the season, I thought it was prudent to keep a safe distance from the wasps.

I decided to use the M.Zuiko PRO 40-150 mm f/2.8 zoom without any teleconverters or extension tubes. This allowed me to take advantage of the lens’s comparatively short minimum focusing distance, excellent handling, as well as its superior optical performance.

As I strolled along some of the walkways at the RBG I looked for a good concentration of wasps, as well as a shooting position that would keep the sun at my back. I soon came upon a suitable group of flowers that were being frequented by a good number of wasps, and positioned my stool appropriately.

Since I wanted to keep a bit of distance between myself and the wasps I chose a focal length of 150 mm (efov 300 mm). I used an aperture of f/8 to create more depth-of-field.

Even though I was shooting in bright sunlight there was some variance with the lighting in amongst the flower blossoms and foliage. I used Auto-ISO so I wouldn’t have to concern myself with quickly changing exposures.

I used my standard Pro Capture H settings with Pre-Shutter Frames and Frame Limiter both set to 15. I shot at 60 frames-per-second which has the first frame locking focus and exposure for the balance of the run. My shutter speed was set to 1/2500. I used -0.7 exposure compensation to help avoid blown out highlights on the wasps.

Wasps are pretty erratic flyers, but I watched them for a few minutes nonetheless. This helped determine which blossoms would provide the best image opportunities.

Rather than shoot willy-nilly at any wasps that were in the general area, I waited until individual wasps approached… or took flight from… designed blossoms.

In many cases I had very narrow shooting windows between the vertical pillars of blossoms. This is where using Pro Capture H proved invaluable as I could capture a sufficient number of consecutive images to get some unobstructed subjects in my photographs.

Preferring action-oriented images, I focused all of my efforts on capturing wasps in-flight.

Implementing a more selective shooting approach proved beneficial. I was able to capture a number of good image runs that yielded several dozen useable photographs, in a compressed time frame.

Overall, my short visit to the Royal Botanical Gardens was quite productive and definitely worth the time invested.

As photographers we can get fixated on specific subject matter like birds-in-flight. We sometimes forget that in-flight images of other species like dragonflies, bees and wasps can also make interesting photographs.

Technical Note
Photographs were captured handheld using camera gear as noted in the EXIF data. Images were produced from RAW files using my standard process. All images were captured using my standard settings with Pro Capture H. These are noted in the body of the article. This is the 1,308 article published on this website since its original inception in 2015.

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