Like many insects, bees have five eyes; two compound eyes and three small simple eyes in the center of their head (referred to as ocelli). For more discussion on ocelli, see my post on Fly Eyes.

The first image is an uncropped, full frame sensor image of a bumblebee. This is the closest that I can get with my 100mm macro lens combined with 68mm of extension tubes, resulting in a magnification of 1.68. If you’re not sure how that works, check out the extension tube magnification calculator (keeping in mind that the base magnification of the lens is 1).

The second image is simply a cropped version showing an even closer look.

Click a picture to embigginate!

Equipment

For this shot I used –

• Canon 6D
• Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro lens
• Exposure 1/100 sec at f/14
• 68mm of Kenko extension tubes.
• Old sigma flash with homemade laminated tissue diffusion.