Methods of Finding and Photographing Lady Beetles
Here are some tips and tricks that I have found helpful for finding and taking identifiable photographs of these speedy beetles.
When should I look for lady beetles?
Lady beetles are similar to many people I know - they are the most active on nice days. If the temperature is 60 degrees F or above with sunny to overcast skies, the beetles will likely be out. If it is cold or rainy, you will have a much lower chance of finding them.
Where should I look for lady beetles?
Lady beetles use all vegetation types, from trees, to shrubs, to herbaceous plants. It is helpful to look for trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants that are visibly loaded with scale insects, aphids, mealy bugs, or other small insects (aka a lady beetle buffet) or show symptoms of high pest loads. For species-specific habitat preferences, check out the species profiles for the lady beetles that have been recorded in Vermont (link here)!
How should I look for lady beetles?
There are a number of different methods that you can use:
- Visual Search: When using this method, you simply scan vegetation with your eyes, collecting and photographing lady beetles as you go.
- Sweep netting: This method requires an insect net. You can either buy one (such as this one) or make your own. When sweep netting, you want to sweep the net across vegetation (herbaceous; tree and shrub branches), knocking beetles into the net. (See a video demonstration here). After you walk and sweep for a while, stop, close the net, then scoop insects into clear containers to photograph them.
- Beat sheeting: Place a sheet under a bush or other vegetation. Shake or gently hit the vegetation overhanging the sheet, knocking insects onto the sheet. Scoop them into containers to photograph. Watch a video demonstration here.
How do I photograph the beetles well?
- Having a macro lens for a camera or phone is helpful, but not required.
- Shading the beetle from the sun to avoid glare can improve the picture.
- It is important to photograph the beetle from multiple angles (get the head, middle section, wing covers, underside) and take more photos than you think you need, increasing your chances of getting a few good photos.
- Either measure the beetle, or have a size reference in the photos, especially if it is one of the small, overall black beetles.
- It can be helpful to bring a cooler and chill the beetles for 5 to 10 minutes - this does not hurt them, it just slows them down!
If you have any questions, leave us a comment or email me at jpupko@vtecostudies.org!
Comments
Here is where I am at on camera settings: If time and situation allow, I experiment with aperture (I find about 7.1 on my camera to be a sweet spot), and with speed and Iso. I am becoming less concerned when I need to utilize high ISO (up to 1600) in order to keep the shutter speed up. There too I experiment; sometimes shooting at top speed for my camera of 1/4000, other times much slower speeds. Different light and insect movements and other factors change what works best in terms of camera settings. I also alternate between my 55-200 zoom lens, my 18-55 lens, and my fixed 35mm lens.
I am open to suggestions on how to improve focus and clarity (without using macro lenses).
Cheers,
Bernie
Bernie, well, there is alway tradeoffs of course. So high ISO means more noise (grainy), but you get a fast shutter and smaller aperture to increase depth of field. So the game is all about getting max depth of field to compensate for shake, movements. The best thing you can do is add a flash and a diffuser so it isn't so shiny on the back of the beetle. The flash will give you much more control to keep ISO down and depth of field wider. Without going macro, one can only do so well here with tiny insects. Of course, this is just to make them look good. For documenting these insects, even mediocre or poor shots often work as photo-vouchers. So smartphones or compact cameras are totally fine for our purposes for sure.
One other thing, shoot in bursts can help as you will find one hits the sweet spot as you shake or the beetle moves. Of course if you want to get fancy, you can shoot many shots and ever so slightly change the focal zone (this is hard) and then make a focus stack later with all the shots. This is not for the faint of heart, but produces amazing results when mastered.
Thank you for more detailed tips on how to improve the quality of insect photos. Another aspect is image size. My 35mm offers the options of using large, medium, or small image sizes. For photographing insects I use large, then crop heavily. Is using the large format the best approach (for iNaturalist posts)? Secondly, cropping, on the one hand, offers a close-up view of the insect without having to press the enlarge function when viewing the image on iNaturalist; on the other hand, cropping, I believe decreases the image quality. Would it be best to not crop before uploading to iNaturalist?
Cropping doesn't necessarily decrease the image quality, it just brings in "focus" the noise more perhaps. We do recommend that folks crop images to best represent the species at hand without getting too carried away with a crop. Also, recall that iNat reduces all larger images to no bigger than 2048 x 2048 pixels. If they didn't do that, it would be really really expensive to store all those photos, and it already is at that size.
Thank You.
Is there a recommended aspect ratio (camera setting)?
Another factor I had forgotten. Try not to crop multiple times. I think that multiple cropping will reduce quality.
That depends on how you are cropping. If you are using something like Lightroom, it never alters the original image. It just gives commands on what you want done to it before you export it for use.
Aspect ratio... there's a big topic! Better to read something like this - https://phlearn.com/magazine/how-to-know-which-aspect-ratio-to-use-in-your-photography/. But for iNat, I don't think it matters. I often use iphone to 1:1 just to get rid of the dead space honestly. It also depends on your sensor size, how you will use the image later, etc etc.
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