Drone fly

[Jerry van Dijk]

Sorry for my absence from the forum lately, work has been really busy! Finally some time to post an image.

This is Eristalis tenax, one of the most common hoverflies, obviously mimicing a honey bee. Hence its common name, Drone fly. You can quite easily tell the difference because our little fellow here has only two wings (actually, one pair is strongly reduced), no jaws and no antennae (just two little 'stumps' on its head). It's often found on umbellifers, such as this Cow parsley. Image taken last summer on the university campus. I'm still frantically sorting out my images from last year :eek:, hopefully in time before spring season really kicks in here :cool:!

Panasonic DMC-FZ18, handheld, 24 mm (144 mm eq.), Suntec 4+ closeup lens, ISO-100, F/3.6, 1/400 sec, EC 0, pattern metering, aperture priority, RAW.
RAW processing in Silkypix, PP in Corel Photopaint, NR in NeatImage. Minor tweaks on levels and sharpness. Considerable crop.

[Ken Bryan]

Nice capture, Jerry. Would like to have a little more DOF to get the fly's outline sharper and perhaps +1 stop to reveal a little more detail in the darker areas. However the sharpness and detail on the near plane are great.

[Julie Kenward]

It does get a little bit fuzzy towards the back end of the fly but this is still a very strong image. I agree that a bit of tweaking on the exposure might bring up even more details - especially on the eye where we can see it but not in it's blazing glory. ;) What I like the best about this image is how much of the fly we actually get to see - the antenna, legs, body, face, and wing are all in good shape and highly visible. Excellent!

[Charles Wesley]

Jerry,

Very nice capture. Not sure how you captured so much dynamic range on this photo. Nice position of the fly on the flower.

Thanks for sharing...
___________________
Charlie Wesley
St Augustine Beach, FL

[Charissa]

Technical advise covered by the people in the know, above, so i will just add my good shot. Nice comp and detail.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi folks, thanks for the comments! I chose to keep the image a little dark because otherwise I blew the whites on the flowers. But since they are not the main subject here, I might get away with that. Otherwise, a curves adjustment might be the way to go? I'm experementing with that, but haven't been very succesful so far.
Charlie, as usual, I just got lucky. It was a bright day, and my guess is that the white flowers acted as a reflector, lightening up the dark areas of the fly. The rest is all level adjustment.

[Ken Childs]

Jerry, I love the image but as others have said, it's a bit dark. There must be a way to lighten up the fly without blowing out the white flowers. Does Corel have anything like Photoshop's shadow highlight tool?

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Ken, that looks much better! Unfortunately, I have no equivalent of the shadow/highlight tool in Corel. There probably are ways to adapt it manually, but not in a user-friendly way with sliders. It's just a bit more basic than Photoshop. I'm seriously considering switching to PS, but I'm a bit reluctant because of the price and the vast amount of functions I'll probably hardly ever use.

[Ken Childs]

Hi Ken, that looks much better! Unfortunately, I have no equivalent of the shadow/highlight tool in Corel. There probably are ways to adapt it manually, but not in a user-friendly way with sliders. It's just a bit more basic than Photoshop. I'm seriously considering switching to PS, but I'm a bit reluctant because of the price and the vast amount of functions I'll probably hardly ever use.
Download the 30 day trial and give it a test drive. I've been working with PS for at least 10 years and I know I use only a fraction of the available options but I sure wouldn't be happy if I was forced to use anything else! Give PS Elements a try too.