keithpassaur

Robberfly Headshot

Head shot of Robberfly

Head shot of Robberfly
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Canon EOS 5D Mark II

settings

Aperture 14/1 ISO 100 Shutter 1/200 Focal Length 100/1

upload_date

Aug, 2016

Views

1016

Likes

+168

Awards

Contest Finalist in The Textures Of Insects Photo Contest

Peer Award

+39

Absolute Masterpiece

Top Choice

Superb Composition

Superior Skill

Magnificent Capture

Outstanding Creativity

Genius

Virtuoso

All Star

Emotions

Impressed

Top Ranks

Top 10 rank

Top 10 rank week 2

Top 10 rank week 1

Top 10 rank

Top 10 rank week 1

Behind The Lens

Location

This photo was taken at Medard Park in Hillsborough County Florida

Time

This was taken late in the afternoon.

Lighting

Lighting was provided by a Canon MT-24 EX flash and very harsh sunlight. The robber fly was on a dead leaf on the ground. The sand around the leaf was very light and reflected a lot of the sunlight.

Equipment

This was shot with a Canon 5D MK II, a Canon 100mm L 2.8 macro lens and a Canon MT-24 flash.

Inspiration

I like taking photos of insects. Robber flies such as this one sometimes just seem to pose for you. This was one of those as I was able to shoot a hand held focus stack of about five images. It has been a while and I don't save the RAW image when I shoot stacks so I am not sure on the exact number of shots.

Editing

The RAW files were converted to tif images in Canon's Digital Photo Professional. The tif images were stacked in Helicon Focus and the new stacked image was processed in LightRoom. It is a massive crop of the original.

In my camera bag

I have two bags, well one is really a box and it is what I use the most. It is a Stanley Fat Max tool box. It is similar to a Pelican case, in that it is plastic and it has a water tight seal (not waterproof I'm sure) it is light weight and incredibly strong. I sold my Pelican cases as for me they were overkill. In it I pack a 5D MK II, 24-105 zoom, 100mm Macro, MPE-65, 100-400 and on occasion a 24mm Tilt Shift. I also have a flash, a flash bracket and diffuser along with some ND filters. Everything is individually packed so when I get somewhere I only pull out what I need and leave the rest locked in the car. To transport what I actually take I use a lightweight nylon bag. Anyway I can go from 5:1 magnification and up to a 400mm zoom with what is in my box. For what it is worth a couple of years ago I attended a Kurt Budliger photography workshop in Maine (great workshop by the way). Everyone had huge backpacks full of equipment and they were climbing over rocks to get to a good spot on the coast. Once they were there they pulled out a couple of filters and that was it. I packed my filters and an extra lens in my daughter’s old purple and black Jansport backpack. One person actually laughed at me but think about it, I didn’t risk dropping and breaking thousands in equipment that I wasn’t using nor I was I ever a target for a thief. If your comeback to this is but it works great as a weight to steady my tripod - try tying a string to your tripod head and stepping on it. My other one is actually a Domke bag. In it I have a Canon T3i that has been converted to 720 nm infrared . A pair of Canon SL1s. For lenses I carry the 10-18, 18-135, 70-300 and a 50mm on occasion. It all weighs next to nothing and it is tons of fun. When I get where I am going I put two cameras in a portfolio bag with a camera insert and one camera around my neck. So, neither of my bags really goes any further than from my house to my car.

Feedback

I have written a little manual on how to photograph live bugs. It is free and posted on www.macroshooting.com. It is called "Three days to Better Bug Photography" In a nut shell it will tell you most of what you read online about photographing live bugs is not true. Most was written by pros that have never done it, or done it well on a consistent basis. Do not read this manual and say "Oh I know that, I'm not going to do the exercise", if you do you won't get better. You really need to do the exercises to prove these things to yourself. I assure you it is not the equipment it is you. I can get a shots like this one with an old $40 lens and a reverse adapter. Or even better is a reversed Nikon Enlarger lens, killer quality but more difficult to master. What you need to understand to do this is that you need to have absolutely no camera movement at all and the camera has to be at the perfect angle. The perfect angle is really a "Magic Angle" as DOF is virtually non-existent with increased magnification. Because of the non-existent DOF you need to manually focus and put the top, bottom, left and right plane of focus on the perfect spot. This come with practice, not from auto focus. The no camera movement comes from the flash and the line "Flash stops all camera movement" is not correct at all and I can easily prove it. For consistent good shots you really need to be at about a 1/4 or less flash power. This was a hand held focus stack which means I shot a series of photos that each had a different focus point and then they were combined. So, I focused on the close point, I moved the camera about a 1/2 mm closer and took another at shot at precisely the same angle.

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keithpassaur

Robberfly Headshot

Head shot of Robberfly

Behind The Lens

See more amazing photos, follow keithpassaur

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