All eyes, in profile

[Mitch Haimov]

133761

This is the same unidentified fly as in my thread of a few days ago, this time showing how the eyes wrap around the head. Cool fly fact: they have the fastest visual response of any animal on the planet.

Critiques and comments always appreciated, as are ID suggestions.

EOS 5DIII, 65 mm macro lens, macro twin flash (diffused), HH
1/200 sec at f/14 and ISO 400
4:1

[Satish Ranadive]

Mitch,
Superb image with great details. I like the yellow and black color combination. Eye looks great.

Regards,
Satish.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Mitch you have fine focus on the eye and overall excellent exposure.. I appreciate using this lens is not easy and you have to make the most of the opportunities offered so please don't take offence at my following comments:
The petal behind the head would have been better if the whole of the head and thorax was in front of it or not, i.e. half yellow and half dark behind the fly does not quite work for me. The limited DOF has produced a few distracting OOF areas e.g. the legs and the petal on the right. All very easy for me to say I have not used one of these lenses!. I don't know if the lens would enable even higher magnification (??) if it did I would suggest going in even closer if possible to isolate the eye/head and proboscis.

[Mitch Haimov]

Thank you, Satish, for your kind comments.

No offense, Jonathan; I appreciate your input! I think the most valuable comments are often those that include suggestions for improvement along with what works well (if, in fact, anything does) and that providing insincere praise is a huge disservice--worse than saying nothing at all*. And I certainly hope the suggestions I provide others do not cause offense, as they are intended to help. Anyway, I agree that having the petal completely surrounding the subject would have been preferable. Although, I don't think I would have liked the POV necessary to achieve that (i.e., higher camera position). Yes, it is possible to get even closer with this lens: This image was made at 4:1 and the lens will go to 5:1. So that would have been a more frame-filling image but still including the entire fly, not one so close as to isolate the head and proboscis without substantial cropping even with an APS-C sensor (this image is un-cropped from a full-frame sensor as presented).

*Also, as I opined at greater length in Kent Wilson's "Butterfly Meetup" thread of October 14, I firmly believe that the process of providing thoughtful constructive criticism can be as much a learning experience for the person commenting as for the one receiving the comment. Unfortunately, that comment came rather late in the thread and I think approximately no one saw it.

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Mitch. Having used this lens, I know what you're up against - especially at 4:1 magnification! :S3: The viewfinder is dark so the manual focusing is a challenge, the DOF is less than 1 mm, and even the slightest movement of subject or camera throws everything OOF. Jon's comments are interesting and valid, but tricky to achieve in the field with this setup. As presented, you did a good job of getting the fly square to the sensor to maximize the available DOF, the lighting and flash diffusion looks good, and you have good detail in the eye. Overall, I'd say you have a keeper! :S3:

[Mitch Haimov]

Thanks, Steve. I'm reasonably happy with it, although I prefer the front view of the same fly I posted a few days earlier. Last night I took the plunge and ordered a used (but still absurdly expensive) copy of Flies: The Natural History and Diversity of Diptera, so I'm hoping to be able to ID this fellow at least to genus once I've spent some of time with the book.