Photographing Flys

[tracker12]

I would like to take some pics of my creations but the ones I have done just don't seem clear and crisp. Any tips on setting backgrounds ect.

 

[gfen]

I just posted a quick and dirty somewhere in another thread, wish I could remember where...

Oh well.

Use a tripod. Use a neutral, plain background. Skip the flash. Use the fore lighting. Play with EVs. Lock your focus. Clean your vise of all the cruft before you take your pictures.

 

[franklin]

Make sure your camera has a macro mode which can focus at the distance between your lens and the fly. If you are using a higher end camera try a polarizer.

 

[gfen]

An example...

I used a lens with a decent close focus ability, and then moved my lens about as close as I could with a little margin for focus changing (figure about 16" away with I think a minimum focus of 13"). This was not a macro lens, because I've never bothered to buy one. There were other ways to achieve macro, but not ideal for this situation.

Using a 70mm lens, with a 1.40x conversion gives me what, 100mm? So, I dropped the fstop to something tigher, f13. In hindsight, I notice I forgot to lower my ISO from 3200 to somehting more sane. I would've been quite happy with f8, ISO 200 and 1/30. The background is a piece of white foam, so I compensated by usign +2EV.

Lighting is provided by an Ott light placed above, forward, and to the left of the fly.

Where I failed was NOT cleaning the lens. I usually don't bother to clean lenses very often, because its often counter productive btu there's a couple of big ole boogers on front element.

Meh, whatever.

 

[Maurice]

So gfen is that a manual focus SLR?

 

[JakesLeakyWaders]

If you don't have an SLR or DSLR try not to read the bottom half of Gfen's post it may boggle your mind, he is a camera know it all. Every thing he says is true though, especially having a steady camera and good light.

If you have a normal point and shoot digital camera with the live screen, as someone mentioned use macro mode which is usually indicated by a flower symbol on your mode dial. Macro typically just allows the camera to focus closer than normal allowing you to larger magnified close shot of very small items.

 

[gfen]

welll like there's part 1 and like part 2.

manual focus available, but just using the half press of the button to lock the focus and then minor adjust the composition with the tripod/vice.

i wish i could properly understand how to do something useful in photoshop/aperature/etc. all the colour level an unsharp masking is way too much for me to figure out. all i ever do is autolevel and move on.

 

[Heritage-Angler]

Hi Tony - What kind of camera do you have (make and model)?

The picture below was taken with my fishing camera - a waterproof Pentax Optio W60. I used the white profile plate on my vise, and just pulled my Ott light down close to the fly. I used the macro mode, and edited the picture with Pentax's ACDSee software that came with the camera. It's cake to use, and really lets you play with adjustments, corrections, resizing, cropping, etc.

gfen - I have a spare point and shoot camera that's just sitting here. It takes awesome macro shots - I'd be willing to loan it to you very long term, along with the editing software...

Five minutes of a tutorial would have you in business.

 

[franklin]

Heritage-Angler wrote:
Hi Tony - What kind of camera do you have (make and model)?

The picture below was taken with my fishing camera - a waterproof Pentax Optio W60. I used the white profile plate on my vise, and just pulled my Ott light down close to the fly. I used the macro mode, and edited the picture with Pentax's ACDSee software that came with the camera. It's cake to use, and really lets you play with adjustments, corrections, resizing, cropping, etc.

gfen - I have a spare point and shoot camera that's just sitting here. It takes awesome macro shots - I'd be willing to loan it to you very long term, along with the editing software...

Five minutes of a tutorial would have you in business.

I have an Opto W50 I use while fishing. The macro feature is great for insect photos along the stream. I forget if the Opto series is threaded for a tripod but I know some of the point and shoot cameras my kids use have macro modes and tripod mounts.

 

[beadhead2]

gfen
Check out this web site ,you will have to do a little searching but there are numerous articles on using photoshop
Here is one I found quickly
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/40996/how-to-use-and-master-the-notoriously-difficult-pen-tool-in-photoshop/
Sign up is free ,and they send you a email every day with new articles

 

[gfen]

Heritage-Angler wrote:
The picture below was taken with my fishing camera - a waterproof Pentax Optio W60. I used the white profile plate on my vise, and just pulled my Ott light down close to the fly. I used the macro mode, and edited the picture with Pentax's ACDSee software that came with the camera. It's cake to use, and really lets you play with adjustments, corrections, resizing, cropping, etc.

This is just as valid, but you may still want to play with the EV steps, regardless.

It might sound complex, but its a very easy concept to work with.

The short of it is, light meters are dumb. They want to make everything grey. 18% Kodak reference grey, to be exact. That's all they want to be. Even the most advanced multizone meters in teh world shoot for that middle grey tone, they just look at multiple "zones" then use those to compute their average and...expose for grey.

Now, the reason this is important is because you're just stuck a sheet of white, black, or grey material behind the fly. Let's use white. Because its white, and the meter wants grey, its going to purposely UNDER expose so that white turns grey. The other objects in the composition will change the shade, sure, but in the end its gonna be grey.. And the fly is going to be also underexposed because it got carried along the road to grey by the background.

Unless you force the camera to overexpose.

Using the EV compensation, you'll tell teh camera to overexpose by 1, or even 2, stops (or more, whatever). You force the camera to stop making the background grey because you told it, "I know you want it to be grey, so if you overexposed what you want, then it'll be white and we'll carry the subject, the fly, along for the ride." Now you have proper exposure.

Shooting against a black background is the opposite. The camera wants to overexpose to make black grey, so you use minus EV steps to force it to under expose the image, and keep your blacks black.

gfen - I have a spare point and shoot camera that's just sitting here. It takes awesome macro shots - I'd be willing to loan it to you very long term, along with the editing software...

My normal cartoon arrogance aside, its a cold day in hell before I use a point and shoot for anything other than banging around for a quick snapshot.

 

[OldLefty]

For all of my macro work indoors I use a DSLR with a lens that gives me about 84mm equivalent. If I'm shooting really small subjects I'll add diopters to give me the magnification I want.

For shooting outdoors I may use my DSLR or I may use my point-and-shoot. It all depends on what I'm doing. If I'm fishing I usually don't carry my DSLR. If I'm serious about photography that day I'll carry my DSLR. I must say that it isn't easy to get a good, crisp image with a point-and-shoot. Of course, some would say I'm a bit fussy.

Top photo is with DSLR. Bottom photo is with point-and-shoot.

 

[gfen]

OldLefty wrote:
If I'm shooting really small subjects I'll add diopters to give me the magnification I want.

Screw-on style? Why the diopters instead of an extension tube?

You use a ring flash, off-camera, or none at all?

...

FWIW, in a thread on entomology in the beginnger thread I inquired about using seines.. I know you've done it, I'd love to get some input on construction and utilization.

 

[OldLefty]

gfen:

Diopters are much easier to use and don't really cut down on f-stops.

I don't use any flash with point-and-shoot. With my DSLR I have strobes on a bracket directing light onto the subject from both sides.

Dave R.

 

[sandfly]

I use a fuji S700 on the macro and natural settings for my flies and insects. Then I'll use a simple (arcsoft photo studio 5) to enhance them then fast stone resizer (free) so I can post them on the inter net.

 

[Fredrick]

Here are some I did I just use macro mode on the camera and try to get good lighting
http://www.smallmouths.com/smallmouth-forum/showthread.php?t=284

 

[jdaddy]

JakesLeakyWaders wrote:
If you don't have an SLR or DSLR try not to read the bottom half of Gfen's post it may boggle your mind, he is a camera know it all. Every thing he says is true though, especially having a steady camera and good light.

If you have a normal point and shoot digital camera with the live screen, as someone mentioned use macro mode which is usually indicated by a flower symbol on your mode dial. Macro typically just allows the camera to focus closer than normal allowing you to larger magnified close shot of very small items.

Thanks!

 

[sandfly]

Fredrick, looks like you need to put some light over your shoulder to lighten the fly some. or try a program to enhance first.

 

[tracker12]

I have a CannonSD790 and a Fuji. I was unable to get a good focus with the Fuji. I switched to the Cannon, used the Ott lite and turned off the flash and it worked out much better.

 

[beadhead2]

gfen
I don't know whether this is of interest to you or not
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/42066/how-to-colorize-black-and-white-vintage-photographs-in-photoshop/