Syrphid Fly - studio portrait 2

[Steve Maxson]

Another view of the grooming Syrphid Fly (Family Syrphidae) photographed in my lightbox setup. 7D, 100mm macro, 1/250, f/16, ISO 100, tripod, 2 remotely fired flashes. All comments are welcome and appreciated.

[Tom Rambaut]

This is very very cool. The detail is just great. I will have to learn how to do this one day.TFS

[Bob Miller]

Steve....This is wonderful...esp that left wing.....It is amazing to me that you can get this kind of magnification with a 100 mm macro....Is there something else that is giving you this amazing magnification? It looks 2x at least

[Steve Maxson]

Thanks for the comments Tom and Bob!

Bob - The way I can get this apparent magnification is simply by cropping the original image. (It helps to have a camera with lots of pixels so you can maintain IQ when doing this.) It is tempting to use the MP-E lens and move in really tight, but DOF suffers when you do this. If, like me, you tend to prefer images with more, rather than less, DOF it may work better to back away from your subject an inch or two to increase DOF and then crop the final image to get the subject size in the frame that you desire. :S3:

[christopher galeski]

nice image Steve,nice depth of field,nice detail.well done.

[Carel v/d Sanden]

Dear Steve
I read that you are using a light box.
Do you have an example picture of the box?
I find this very interesting
Its a verry beatifull picture

regards Carel

[Steve Maxson]

Thanks for your comments Christopher and Carl!

Carl - A photo of my lightbox can be found in this thread: http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/91878-Lady-Beetle-and-lightbox-setup

Ken Childs uses a little different setup, but with similar results: http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/92497-Studio-Paper-Wasp

[Carel v/d Sanden]

Hi Steve
thanks for the pictures, I'll try it.
It seems a very expensive construction. : Whoa!

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Steve,
Yet another great example! OK....got to go out and get doing.....so little time.....

[bhavya joshi]

wonderful shot again.. I really like your Studio Bugs.. Keep them Coming..

[Julie Kenward]

I like the pose of this one even more than the other...what a gem!

[Ken Childs]

And another beauty!
Even though the depth isn't there, I also prefer this pose and as Bob pointed out, that wing is awesome! :cheers: