St Mark's fly (female)

Bruce Williams · Post by **Bruce Williams** » Fri May 04, 2007 3:45 pm

Hi folks,

I took this pic this evening and must confess that I didn't recognise the species (in fact I thought it was a beetle

). Anyway, it's a female St Mark's fly Bibio venosus (males have huge bulbous eyes), named because they first appear around 25th April (st Mark's day) and are seen for just a couple of weeks. The female is larger than the male at ~14mm.

It was quite a difficult shot as the fly was only about 6 inches from the ground and light levels in the wood were quite low.

Minolta A2, ISO 100, hand held: 1/15s at f/5.6

Bruce

DaveW · Post by **DaveW** » Sat May 05, 2007 5:36 am

Nice picture Bruce, and an interesting fly.

DaveW

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Sat May 05, 2007 5:40 am

It looks like you did a great job on a tricky subject Bruce. I can see how you could think it was a beetle

. there is lots of details on the fly and it looks like you have plenty of DOF.

Mike B in OKlahoma · Post by **Mike B in OKlahoma** » Sun May 06, 2007 12:43 am

What a strange-looking critter, I've not seen anything like it. Good capture in the very low light, I was going to criticize your choice of f/5.6 till I saw the shutter speed! This type of situation is why I just give up to the dark side (not Nikon, not THAT dark!

) and use flash for most of my closeup work. But from the way the body and wings look, that would've had glare problems for this subject.

Congrats on showing a very different insect.

Ken Ramos · Post by **Ken Ramos** » Sun May 06, 2007 7:42 pm

Dark or dark and shinny insects are really a challange there Bruce and you did good with this one.

Usually I avoid shooting things like this and I guess I shouldn't, because if I don't shoot them I will never learn how to. I find myself all the time worrying over whether or not I have blown the whites or highlights in images that I happen to take and that seems to be enough for now I guess.

Good job there Bruce

Bruce Williams · Post by **Bruce Williams** » Mon May 07, 2007 9:36 am

Thanks for your encouraging comments guys.

I must admit to being quite pleased with this pic. I had to lay flat-out on my side, bracing the camera against a short stick as a makeshift monopod. In all I took about a dozen shots, slightly varying EV compensation (on some) and trying like mad to fire the shutter without introducing camera movement. Checking them on screen when I got home I found four that were worth keeping - this one is the best.

Bruce

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Mon May 07, 2007 10:23 am

Bruce, this is nice work under difficult circumstances!

Mike B in OKlahoma wrote:I was going to criticize your choice of f/5.6 till I saw the shutter speed!

Mike, bear in mind also that the Minolta A2 uses a small sensor -- only 8.8 x 6.6 mm. Due to scaling laws previously discussed at length, f/5.6 on that camera, for this shot, gives DOF more like f/16 using a DSLR. You can see from the sharpness of the capture that the DOF is fine. Any smaller would have made the shot more difficult without improving the result.

--Rik

Bruce Williams · Post by **Bruce Williams** » Tue May 08, 2007 4:14 am

Thanks Rik - I find your technical input very helpful.

Bruce