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Steve Maxson
10-16-2010, 04:10 PM
The same Syrphid fly on the same daisy as my previous post. This view gives you a good look at the proboscis as the fly is feeding. 40D, MP-E 60 mm, 1/250, f/16, ISO 100, MT-24 twin lites (diffused), hand held. RAW file PP in CS3, levels, curves, blended the dark areas in the background between the petals, crop. All comments are welcome and appreciated. (I see I'm still losing some brightness in the whites during the uploading process :( )

Dave Leroy
10-16-2010, 04:31 PM
Lovely detail Steve. A view we don't often see.

Photo may also look nice as a bit of a pano.

Dave

WIlliam Maroldo
10-16-2010, 08:34 PM
Steve; you are the lord of the flies (flower flies to be more precise)! I don't know what is causing the uneveness of your background, but it has a slightly darker vertical band to the left of the fly. The DOF is fine, but I'm wondering if you could have upped the ISO and increased the Fstop (DOF). Is there some advantage in ISO 100 particular to Macro, whereas in avian I usually don't ever go below ISO 400, and mostly use 1000-1250. Great work as usual Steve. regards~Bill

Steve Maxson
10-16-2010, 10:37 PM
Steve; you are the lord of the flies (flower flies to be more precise)! I don't know what is causing the uneveness of your background, but it has a slightly darker vertical band to the left of the fly. The DOF is fine, but I'm wondering if you could have upped the ISO and increased the Fstop (DOF). Is there some advantage in ISO 100 particular to Macro, whereas in avian I usually don't ever go below ISO 400, and mostly use 1000-1250. Great work as usual Steve. regards~Bill
Hi Bill. I think the darker vertical line you are referring to is the OOF seam between two of the flower's petals. The smallest f-stop on the MP-E lens is f/16 so there is no option to increase it. This lens can get you in really close - much closer than this photo indicates, but the tradeoff is that, as I'm sure you know, the closer you get the smaller the DOF becomes. I was using ISO 100 simply to minimize noise - I could use this low ISO (plus f/16 and 1/250 ss) because I was using flash as the main light (so in this case it doesn't really matter how bright the ambient light is because the light from the flash is providing essentially all the effective light to the camera sensor). It's a whole different ballgame when you are shooting without flash and then higher ISOs are often necessary. I hope this makes some sense. :) Actually, there is a lot more to effective use of flash for macro than my simple explanation might suggest - and I'm still trying to master it.

WIlliam Maroldo
10-16-2010, 11:12 PM
Thanks for the explanation, and I was thinking you could go beyond F16, but this is not the case. It didn't occur to me that the background was white flower petals, which certainly makes sense. Aso I hadn't thought the flash was the main light, but having just purchased a flash and used it late this afternoon, and looking at the images a short while ago, I realize this is the case in my images as well. regards~Bill

Ken Childs
10-17-2010, 09:52 AM
Hey Steve, whenever I open one of your images in CS3 I get a "this file contains file info data which cannot be read and has been ignored" message. This may just have something to do with the meta data and isn't significant but maybe there's some relation between this and the problems you're having with the whites.

Another beauty shot! The pollen on the face and proboscis really adds a lot. The only change I might suggest would be to increase the contrast, mainly on the fly's head because it looks just a bit flat.