Wasp Bee and flies

[lesno1]

1

2

3

4

[Shadowman]

Nice series.

[FootLoose]

It's a very colourful set, Les. Were you using a flash?

[lesno1]

Thanks yes im using a flash havent quite sorted the deflection out yet though

[Rufus]

Excuse my ignorance but, just out of interest, are the red eyes caused by the same phenomonen as in photos of humans or are they the normal colour for these creatures? It looks like the former.

They are a nice set of images.

[DanK]

David,

Les will have to answer about those particular flies, but I believe it is natural. Many flies have eyes that are like that, ranging from red through brown. For example, this bottle fly:



I have never seen a phenomenon like red eye in bug shots. Red eye in humans (the color is not red in all species) is caused by light reflected from the retina. There's no retina in bug eyes. What one often gets when one uses flash with bug eyes is glare.

Dan

[DanK]

Thanks yes im using a flash havent quite sorted the deflection out yet though

Les, by deflection to you mean diffusion?

For a few years, I used a regular Sto-fen diffuser with a few layers of paper towel wrapped over the front and aluminum foil around the sides. It was easy to make and easy to deal with because it was small and fit perfectly on the flash. It was better than nothing, but not great. So, I moved on to what people call a "coke can diffuser"--a larger diffuser that is made by cutting up a soda can so that you can fit one end around the flash. I leaned about it from Brian Valentine (screen name Lord V), who is a truly superb macro photographer. You can find his thread about this here. I tried a bunch of diffusing materials, but I usually now use two sheets of baking parchment paper, which works very well. The whole apparatus is big and somewhat awkward, and I hold it on with gaffer's tape, which is a bit messy, but it works very well if you position it very close to the end of the lens.

This is what it looks like, held on by a home made bracket:



Dan

[lesno1]

Hi Dan yes i do mean diffusion its a bit harsh at the moment that set up looks interesting i think i will give it a try many thanks for that

[lesno1]

Hi Rufus yes these are the natural eyes

[Rufus]

David,

I have never seen a phenomenon like red eye in bug shots. Red eye in humans (the color is not red in all species) is caused by light reflected from the retina. There's no retina in bug eyes. What one often gets when one uses flash with bug eyes is glare.

Well I never knew that, I assumed all eyes had retinas!

Apparently dragonflies have one of the highest-quality compound eyes with 30,000 lenses per eye. Birds of prey, such as buzzards, have up to 1 million sensor cells per square millimeter

Nature is just amazing.

But one lens on a camera is enough .. well one at a time anyway.

[vaez]

Nice set

[dem]

Thanks for posting these.

#3 is my favourite. Nice comosition, nice lighting, focus on the eyes.

The flash is too harsh in #1 and #4. As Dan said, using some paper towel as a diffuser might be a good idea.

The focus plane is slightly behind the eyes in #2 and #4.

#1 looks overpocessed and not as sharp as other images. The colours are too saturated and there is too much sharpening applied. It looks like it was shot at a high ISO and cropped quite a bit.

Did you use the same rig for all shots?

[lesno1]

Hi Dem yes same rig and settings for all pics i think the difference would be strong sunlight in some and some shade in others

[dem]

Hi Dem yes same rig and settings for all pics i think the difference would be strong sunlight in some and some shade in others

Thanks Les. Light certainly is an important factor in the overall appearance but I think post-processing and how much you crop have an effect on image sharpness in particular. There is quite a gap between image #3 and #1 in terms of image quality. There is always an element of luck involved in shooting bugs though as even a small breeze can affect the image sharpness and shift the focus point.

Something doesn't quite add up about the flash. You are shooting at 1/500 sec, well above the flash sync speed of 1/200 sec on the Canon EOS 700D, and the EXIF says "Flash Off, Did not fire". You might be shooting some HSS third party flash that is not recorded in the EXIF, I just mentioning this because I had some strange flash failures in past. Like a flash would fire after the shutter has closed or not fire at all because the "Macro" mode disabled the flash. If it is a wired manual flash, it should be quite straightforward to set up though.

[lesno1]

Thanks for this Dem i will check the flash out but it is firing on macro and yesit is a third party flash

[DanK]

For what it is worth, my default bug setting is 1/125, flash in ETTL mode, varying ISO depending on how close the background is. At least with Canons in ETTL mode, increasing ISO has the effect of increasing ambient light relative to flash-illuminated sections. So if the background is close, I generally stick with ISO 200, but I increase to 400 or even 800 if the background is not illuminated sufficiently.