A fly weaing a wasp suit....

[Michel Pilon]

Hello all,

Here is a fly from the Syrphidae family called Parasyrphus nigritarsis photographied at East Angus, Quebec, Canada. Those flies from that family looks like wasps in order to afraid predators...

The difficulty with my Bridge (Panasonic FZ-20) is to do the manual focus by approaching or moving away the lens. I had to be quick in order to realize that while the fly stay still in flight like here...

1/1000s was far from enough to freeze the wings...

I tried to extent the bottom of the image with Photoshop in order to not letting the leg touch the frame but I was unable to obtain a satisfying picture...

Thank you for commenting this picture :)

FZ20: ISO100; 1/1000s; f3.7; hand held, without flash

Michel Pilon
Quebec, Canada

http://parcours.pilonm.org/pictures/insectes/parasyrphusNigritarsis1.jpg

[Julie Kenward]

The comp and detail are very nice but the lighting is beautiful!

[Gus Cobos]

Excellent capture and composition...:cool:

[Robert Amoruso]

Michel,

Fly is nicely focused with good DOF. The out of focus flowers are visually interesting w/o overpowering the fly. I would have preferred not to see the leg clipped. Nice work handheld.

[Mike Moats]

Hey Michel, very cool image, excellent details and the bee and agree with Robert about the clip on the leg, but still and great shot.

[Steve Wheeler]

Very hard to image hand holding, essentially manual focus if I understood and catching this guy in flight... Hard for me to imagine anyway.

Very nicely done.

[Bob Allen]

What a cool shot! Very sharp for ambient light; even the antennal aristae ('whips') are visible. Syrphids hover consistently; clever of you to try such a shot. The clipped tarsus could be rebuilt from the left one, would take some time but totally worth it. The dark twig in the upper right is distracting, so I'd crop from the top & right. The flowers (Maianthemum sp. or Smilacina sp.?) add great visual interest and a sense of place.

[Michel Pilon]

Hello all and thank you very much for your very pertinent comments...

I must confess that I tried to rebuild the right leg but was unable to do it with the green bg and the blurred bg...

As I was able to do it once, I will retry this summer :)

Cheers!

Michel