Macros of flies and other things

Lord Vetinari

Over the last few weeks I've been practicing macro shots with my Canon 300D, sigma 105mm EX macro lens and sigma DG super flash. Here's a few of the results. Comments welcome.

amadeus

jumpin jimminy I'll never slander a macro shot again these shots are cool.

Andy

welcome to dgrin, mate! this shots are simply amazing ... the closeups, the copulation, the drop-reflection ... hoo boy ... very very good my friend.

thanks for posting!

Shima

Wow, these are some breath-taking macro shots. Really amazing work, I can only hope to one day achieve work like this.

Lord Vetinari

Thanks for the comments- had quite a lot of help from the peeps over at DPreview.com on how to improve.

BrettG

Lord Vetinari wrote:

Over the last few weeks I've been practicing macro shots with my Canon 300D, sigma 105mm EX macro lens and sigma DG super flash. Here's a few of the results. Comments welcome.

Absolutely stunning! Is this "as-is" or post-processed a lot?

Lord Vetinari

BrettG wrote:

Absolutely stunning! Is this "as-is" or post-processed a lot?

Thanks BrettG
Little bit of post processing- I had to lighten part of the image in the drop (right side) using the photoshop dodge tool to reveal the other leaves and then do a bit of noise reduction on it. The one thing I could not do was to get the leaf and water drop actually in focus at the same time as getting the image in the water drop in focus.
As an example I cheated with this pic by cutting the water drop images that were in focus and pasting them on to the same shot where the leaf was in focus.

BridgeCity

WOW! Im curious how you got the focus spot on? You have Exif's? Are these handheld?

Amazing work

Lord Vetinari

BridgeCity wrote:

WOW! Im curious how you got the focus spot on? You have Exif's? Are these handheld?

Amazing work

The shots are all handheld and manual focus. I found autofocus a bit of a pain when doing macro work. What I do for insects is set the lens to the required magnification (focus) and then creep up/sway back and forth and hit the trigger when it's in focus. When I first started I found about 75% of the shots had the wrong focus point but now I'm getting better at it I'm up to about 80% with the correct focus point.
There's a set of shots here-
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1031&message=13790473
That show a fly demolishing another fly (two are in the above set) I only had one or two shots out of the 15 I took that were not focused ok- all handheld and I moved twice to get different angles.
The shots are all taken with the camera in manual setting F11 to F13, 1/200 th sec, Flash gun in ETTL mode mounted off camera on a bracket with a homemade softbox diffuser.
Some pics of the rig here
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1031&message=13654064

REECEPHOTO

Outstanding
Outstanding!! These are so nice.
Wonderful comp, good color, & the focus ell it just could not get any bettter, dead on.
Wonderful............work
Welcome to the forum and please keepem comming.thumb

Lord Vetinari

REECEPHOTO wrote:

Outstanding!! These are so nice.
Wonderful comp, good color, & the focus ell it just could not get any bettter, dead on.
Wonderful............work
Welcome to the forum and please keepem comming.thumb

Thanks Jeff - I'm sure they could be better but I like them and enjoy taking them.

DoctorIt

Is it too late to say WOW!!! Holy cow those are some gorgeous shots! I think the mostly black backgrounds that you have make everything very dramatic - and not that you need much help in that department, the subject matter is awesome too!!!

ChrisJ

Are you sure you're allowed to post this? Looks pretty racy!

Incredible shots. Makes me want a macro lens!

Lord Vetinari

DoctorIt wrote:

Is it too late to say WOW!!! Holy cow those are some gorgeous shots! I think the mostly black backgrounds that you have make everything very dramatic - and not that you need much help in that department, the subject matter is awesome too!!!

Thanks DoctorIt.
Yes the dark backgrounds are an inevitable result of using the ETTL flash on the macros- nothing gets lit up beyond about a foot.

Lord Vetinari

95Mcaj wrote:

Are you sure you're allowed to post this? Looks pretty racy!

Incredible shots. Makes me want a macro lens!

Thanks 95Mcaj.
The shot is not really racy at all- watched these two flies for about 5 mins and did not actually see them copulate- think they were practising for piggyback fights. The butterfly shot is actually more racy- they were copulating like that for about 40 minutes.

bfjr

Welcome

Rockin 1st post, Well the 1st one I've seen of yours

Skippy

Excellent Work

Lord Vetinari wrote:

Over the last few weeks I've been practicing macro shots with my Canon 300D, sigma 105mm EX macro lens and sigma DG super flash. Here's a few of the results. Comments welcome.

Macro produces some amazing eye candy doesn't it
Something like a fly that most people would just swat the life out of take on a whole new look, the contour of the body, the complexity of they eyes, the structure of the face..........snap out of it Skippy ! sorry I can't help meself, I enjoy Macro too.

Thank you for sharing your excellent shots......... Skippy (Australia)

USAIR

Holy Cow !!!
Great photos and welcome

Thanks
Fred

Khaos

Welcome. I'm glad your here because those shots are amazing.

rahmonster

Stunning.......Just fantastic!:D

Lord Vetinari

Thanks for the comments/ appreciation all.

As I said in the first post I've been trying pics of flies etc for about the last 3 weeks and posting at DPreview and have been getting a lot of tips. One of your members hijacked me there and suggested you peeps might enjoy seeing some of the shots. These shots are a culmination of all that practice. I then found that the same setup (using flash etc) was very good for other things eg flowers. So now it is out in the garden every morning looking for something interesting.
Obviously I find the macro world very interesting and largely ignored - might partially be due to my old profession (microbiologist)- now if I could get a Nomarski phase interference lens......

nle57

wow
those are amazing shots. Have you or anyone here used the Canon 100mm macro lense? I was thinking of purchasing that one, but this sigma one has made me rethink my decision. I believe the sigma is it's slighly cheaper than the 100mm canon as well.

ziggy53

Lord Vetinari wrote:

Thanks for the comments/ appreciation all.

... now if I could get a Nomarski phase interference lens......

Naw, that would look flat and monochromatic by comparison. Your photographs here have true depth and dimension and color and ... well, lots more "good stuff". Beautiful work.

Thanks,

ziggy53

jwear

. Your photographs here have true depth and dimension and color and ... well, lots more "good stuff". Beautiful work. I will steal the comment and echo it I have a 105 nikon and have never got the dof and sharpness you have I have to come back to this and read what you have written ,maybe a class for us would be good . very ,very nice shots

Rufio220

O man those are awsome. That is really, really cool. Nice job. The bugs look like they were posing for you, how did you get them to stay there and not fly away? Good job. you are really good.

erich6

Great shots! I really like the drop pictures and all technical aspects of your macros are right on.

Erich

SusanB

andy wrote:

welcome to dgrin, mate! this shots are simply amazing ... the closeups, the copulation, the drop-reflection ... hoo boy ... very very good my friend.

thanks for posting!

I agree!

Susan

Lord Vetinari

Thanks all for the appreciative comments.

Brian V.

Phil U.

Amazing macros!

nzmacro

Well its about time you showed up here . I tend to hang out here as well. Its good company and friendly Brian.

Anyway, SUPERB shots and work and a pleasure to view

Danny.

Lord Vetinari

Hi Danny

Think you have seen these before!