Bzzt

This afternoon I spent a fruitless half an hour or so, trying to get a macro shot of a bumble bee in flight that I was happy with.  Its always a bit hit and miss, as their flight path is erratic, so my results generally fall into the following categories:

1. Completely missed the bee (i.e. no bee in frame)

2.  Bee in flight but out of focus (i.e. bee in shot but blurred or even just a blur)

3.  Bee in focus but flying away (i.e. picture of bee's bottom)

4.  Bee in focus but seen from above (not the best view of a bee)

5.   Bee in focus and flying towards the lens or flying side on to the lens plane (these are what we want):

5.1.   Background too messy and distracting to be useable 

5.2.  Acceptable background

5.2.1  Bee at the edge of the frame with some bit missing (I get a lot of these)

5.2.2  Middle of bee in focus, head and eyes out of focus (I get a lot of these too)

5.2.3  Gold dust - head of bee in focus (I don't get very many of these at all)

I didn't get any category 5.2.3 shots today, much to my irritation, and to show you what I mean, the closest that I managed is the extra which is frustratingly not quite in focus and slightly blurred - and no amount of careful processing on my part is able to turn that particular sows ear into a silk purse.  

But as a consolation here's a hoverfly instead, which I think is probably one of the Eristalis Drone Flies but its hard to say precisely which one from this angle.