Red Banded Sand Wasp (Ammophila sabulosa) & Cuckoo Wasp female (Hedychrum nobile) **in situ**, France 2019

            _MG_9212

ℹ️ Hard work on this but perfect timing.. And what happened was beyond my expectations ! 
My goal this year was to make in situ shots of a flying Cuckoo Wasp, straight in the field and not in studio this time.
I knew where to go but unfortunately some fuck**g motocross ruined the place early this month. So I managed to block the path and I finally got a quiet place for setting all the equipment. 
And I couldn't expect a better scene. The animals were exactly aligned when they triggered the infra-red sensor... thus, both are super sharp ! This is absolutely exceptional regarding the fact that the depth of field is ridiculously thin at such magnification. Furthermore, they were at the right place into the 24x36 frame. To give you a better idea, this female Cuckoo wasp is about 6mm (0.24 in). Males are even smaller.

But I have to confess that I made a mistake : at this place, the main hosts of this tiny Cuckoo Wasp are some Cerceris and Odynerus spp. ; in fact these are other kind of small "wasps" digging holes in the sand. I thought the hole near which I installed my flash system belonged to one of them, but obviously, it was made by another bigger wasp, the Red Banded Sand Wasp (Ammophila sabulosa). I didn't see what exactly happened down there because I was not watching at this moment (my system is working in an autonomous way), but I guess the Red Banded Sand Wasp was already into its hole while the Cuckoo Wasp decided to paid a visit… probably not a very good idea ! 

Technical data :

- 6 wireless flashes (1/30,000s) + Fresnel lenses (at x3 magnif.) + 3 diffusers
- 2 Canon EOS cameras (FF + APS-C)
- Homemade high speed shutter system (~6-8ms response)
- Infra-red sensor Keyence LV-H300 large beam (3ms response)
- 100mm macro Canon + closeup lens 250D (with reversed back lens) 
- Single shot - 5 sec. - f/13 - ISO 160
   

Taken on: July 29, 2019

Tags:

wasp

wildlife

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deschandol

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