Sleepy Little Bat

by Mike Lee

Title

Sleepy Little Bat

Artist

Mike Lee

Medium

Photograph - Digital Photography

Description

I visited an old talc mine in northern Nevada for the specific purpose of attempting to photograph one of the bats that sleep there during the day. It is quite challenging to get a photo of them as they rest face down along the walls in a passage that I can barely stand in, about chest-high off the floor. Plus, while some light does get in the relatively shallow dig, it is pretty dark for getting a camera to focus and I certainly wouldn’t want to disturb the little critters while they rest up for a night of hunting insects. I took a couple light stands and some little LED panel lights I generally use for nightscape shooting. These lights can be dimmed WAY down so as not to disturb the bats. I also borrowed my wife’s 100mm f2.8 macro lens to for the task. This lens is absolutely tack sharp and purpose built for close-up work and that big aperture lets in lots of light. The downside is that depth of field is almost nil at that focal length and aperture when you’re shooting something from a foot away. Therefore, a single frame may only have the face of a mouse-sized creature in focus and nothing else. By placing the camera on a tripod very low and pretty much leaning the camera to the wall of the passage, I was able to shoot some longish exposures to gather enough light to expose this bat. I also used my mirrorless camera’s automatic focus stacking feature to shoot 32 separate frames to ensure I’d have sharp sections of the bat from front to back to later merge in Photoshop (the camera also composites them automatically but only in JPEG and I wasn’t super happy with that one). Avid macro shooters actually use a "slider" that physically moves the camera a tiny bit with each shot which produces better results as it eliminates the "breathing" that can occur by changing the focus point each time as it is done here. My result isn’t perfect but, given the challenges and not wanting to spend too much time and disturb the animals, I’m fairly pleased

Uploaded

December 23rd, 2024

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