Small Fly on Stick

[BillTyler]

Small fly (about 1/8 inch long) perched on the tip of a stick.

Canon 5Dmk3, MP-E 65mm macro lens at between 3x and 4x magnification

1/200, f/16, ISO 800
Canon macro twin flash with +1 exposure compensation

There's a piece of black construction paper taped to the wall behind the stick.

[Allen Sparks]

Hi Bill, nice details...love those compound eyes! excellent critical focus. May want to burn some of the brighter areas of the perch. ...A tough subject well handled... -- Allen

[Mitch Haimov]

Nicely done, Bill. Interesting, alien subject. Those eyes make the image. You have some black spots on your BG that would be easy to remove.

[BillTyler]

Nicely done, Bill. Interesting, alien subject. Those eyes make the image. You have some black spots on your BG that would be easy to remove.

Thanks, Allen and Mitch. I was concentrating on the bug and didn't notice that my sensor was dirty. Here's a revised version with some background cleanup and darkening of the perch.

Bill

[Mitch Haimov]

Oh, I like the repost much better, Bill. The darker perch is a winner--no longer competes with your subject.

[Jonathan Ashton]

A finely focused image, very tricky I would imagine, the image is almost head on so DOF is of course very limited having said that the eyes are most important and they are sharp. I find the slight softness of the upper forelegs keeps pulling my attention from the head. Perhaps if the image had been a little more lateral this softness would be less apparent. I have no experience with this lens so it is probably much easier for me say than you to do!

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Bill. It's good to see another MP-E lens user and your repost is an improvement. It's nice to see the detail in those eyes, but I think the image would be stronger if more of the head was within your DOF. At this magnification your DOF is only about a millimeter and your f/stop is already maxed out at f/16. One way to get more depth is to back off on your magnification and then crop more in post. With the 5D III you have plenty of pixels to work with - especially for web presentation. Another thing to consider is that at 3-4X magnification you are losing sharpness to diffraction with this lens - your image would be sharper at about f/11 and the small DOF won't be changed all that much. Also, there are a number of flash-generated specular highlights in your image - these can be reduced or eliminated by using a diffuser with your twin flash. As an example, I would refer you to the two recent posts in this forum by Jason Stander to see what a difference effective flash diffusion can make. I hope to see more of your work here in Macro and I hope these suggestions are helpful. :S3: