Hover and Orangetip

[lesno1]

[Manfred M]

Great shot of the fly; a strong and effective image. The other is not nearly as effective .

[Astro]

Hi Les, nice captures. paticularly the Episyrphus. I think the Orange tip could do with a degree of brightening though.
I think that the white in the sunlit (right) wing would naturally be a lot brighter in direct sun.

[Geoff F]

Orange-tips are notoriously difficult to photograph. They rarely settle for long enough to let me focus, never mind worry about the composition.

However, with this image I would consider slightly toning down the background. An edited mask or an adjustment brush etc. Then, I suspect, the remaining highlights on the actual butterfly would look fine as they are now.

[DanK]

Nice images, particularly the first.

However, both show halos. This seems quite limited in the second one--e.g., there are halos along the tops of the white petals, but they aren't conspicuous. They are conspicuous in the first--e.g., along the top of the far eye and along portions of the legs. This can be caused by oversharpening, but the last time we traded notes about halos, if I recall correctly, you said that you did little sharpening.

[Manfred M]

However, both show halos. This seems quite limited in the second one--e.g., there are halos along the tops of the white petals, but they aren't conspicuous. They are conspicuous in the first--e.g., along the top of the far eye and along portions of the legs. This can be caused by oversharpening, but the last time we traded notes about halos, if I recall correctly, you said that you did little sharpening.

Dan - this is an effect we see a lot in studio work, especially when shooting against a white background. It has nothing to do with sharpening.

The reflected light wraps around the edges of the subject. This is often done on purpose and we will even set studio lights behind the subject to create this effect, which is referred to as rim lighting.

I suspect the white flowers are acting as reflectors in this shot, certainly around the legs.

[lesno1]

Dan - this is an effect we see a lot in studio work, especially when shooting against a white background. It has nothing to do with sharpening.

The reflected light wraps around the edges of the subject. This is often done on purpose and we will even set studio lights behind the subject to create this effect, which is referred to as rim lighting.

I suspect the white flowers are acting as reflectors in this shot, certainly around the legs.

Thanks for clearing that up for me Manfred

[DanK]

I suspect the white flowers are acting as reflectors in this shot, certainly around the legs.

Maybe.

I just went through scores of my own bug shots, looking for this sort of halo. I'm away from home and therefore don't have access to most of my photos or to my catalog, so I was limited to those on my website (including one provate gallery of things I decided didn't make the cut to show publicly). I found a prominent halo like these in only one image, and lacking my data, I can't see how I processed it.

On the other hand, very rarely shoot in open sunlight without a diffused flash, and that might change the balance between front lighting and reflected light.

Here's one example. It was shot in sunlight bright enough to create shadows of the legs. In this case, I didn't have a flash, so all of the lighting is sunlight. With the possible exception of the bottom of the front right leg, I don't see halos. Without my catalog, I can't see the sharpening, but at that time, my sharpening of bug shots was often a value of 60 or so with a radius of 1.4 to 2.0 in Lightroom. That's just a guess, however.

[xpatUSA]

As to the halos, it is noticeable that the posted hoverfly image is only 638x517px (as downloaded from the LyteBox view). With that amount of down-sampling from the original, artifacts (halos, jaggies, moire, etc.) can only be expected - unless some care was taken beforehand.

http://kronometric.org/phot/processi...%20methods.htm
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