Fly head

[delgado]

Hello everyone, long term lurker finally braving a post

The amount of expertise on this site is mind-blowing, it takes so long to try and absorb it all.

I'm in the middle of building a studio stacking setup and it's now at the point where I can actually use it with a bit of bodging. I'm not sure of the species of this fly. I found it behind a cupboard - it had obviously been there for a while, I need to read up on how to clean specimens, I know it looks pretty gross.



From memory I think it's about 30 images, stacked with Zerene. At the moment I use a Samsung GX10 with Sigma 105 and a reversed 50mm 1.7.

I know there's a million things wrong with this image, but it represents that 'progress!' moment for me from the extremely poor results I was getting previously. I haven't done any cleaning of the image as the fly is so dirty it didn't seem worthwhile

[Mogie]

ZOMBIE FLY!!!!
I like it looks good. Maybe come back to it in a month or so and photograph various stages of decomposition. Make a nice time lapse.

[rjlittlefield]

Delgado, welcome aboard!

Isn't it great when everything starts coming together?

I immediately notice a bunch of good things about this fly. The lighting is well controlled, retaining detail in both the highlights and shadows. The image looks crisp everywhere, and there's even a hint of striations on one big bristle (around x=541,y=123 in the image as posted). Stacking is almost perfect. Even the debris is well rendered -- clearly this is a long dead fly! (By the way, it would still look like a long dead fly even if you cleaned away all the debris. There is a distinctive appearance to the eyes, where the insides have dried up and pulled away from the surface layers.) Background is clean and complements the subject. Subject is positioned so that background parts are not distracting, and there's just enough visible detail left to suggest that those are parts and not, say, some hard to explain shadow.

Defects are harder to find. I think I see one light gray stacking halo around the long bristle at lower left of face, where it crosses the edge from face to background. It's a bit distracting that one antenna escapes from the frame -- my eyes keep following it out. The posing is clinical, which could be either perfect or an opportunity for improvement, depending on intended use for the image. Since you're still learning the technology, it might be a distraction to worry about posing at the same time.

I'm curious about how you had your lenses set for this job. Are you stopping down the front lens or the rear?

--Rik

[delgado]

Hi Rik, thanks for the welcome and for your really helpful feedback

You're quite right about the composition, at this point not a lot of thought is going into it, mostly trying to get to grips with lighting at the moment (this one has come out much better than previous attempts which I'm embarrassed to post).

In terms of lenses, I'm stopping down the front reversed 50mm to about f8-f11 and leaving the 105mm wide open at f2.8. Is this the best way to do it?

Mogie - sounds like a great idea but unfortunately I have now parted company with zombie fly

[rjlittlefield]

I'm stopping down the front reversed 50mm to about f8-f11 and leaving the 105mm wide open at f2.8. Is this the best way to do it?

That's perfect. You can probably coax a little more resolution from the reversed 50mm by opening it up another stop, but only a test would tell for sure. Stopping down the rear lens is often done, but only because it's convenient. At this magnification, you'll get better quality by stopping down the front as you are doing. For discussion of this issue, see FAQ: Stopping down a lens combo.

--Rik

[delgado]

Thanks I'll take a look