I wanted to learn taking quality macro shots of my flies, so I really put some time and effort into that.
Then I thought I tied some fine hackled dries, #16 hooks, and took some macro photos of the flies.
Only to discover that these macro photos show all yr mistakes, just 20 times larger than they are.
We can never win, can we?
Mart
Even the so-called experts tie flies that don’t look perfect in a macro shot.
You think that shows up faults? I once used one of my fly pictures to test putting a photo on a fifty inch t.v. screen before showing some family pictures that night. My nice smooth dubbed body looked like a mountain range!
Macro pics can make one a better tier…or, give up taking pics.
oh it certainly makes you better. beautiful shots of some beautiful and beautifully tied flies.
Macro photos of my flies are really discouraging, but your photos are excellent and your ties are beauties. I’d be very happy to get close to those hackles.
On my monitor, those flies are magnified 12x over a sz 16 hook.
Fish don’t see in macro focus do they???..if they do, holy smoke then I’d better go back to fly tying school!
IMO, Nothing wrong with your pics nor your flies, so please don’t get discouraged. I wish I had a nice digital camera/macro lens to take pics of my own work, but then again, I’d likely feel even worse than you do right now…ha!
We are all human and seeing little things that bother us only make us strive for improvement, doesn’t it?
Nice work Mart.
Mart,
Very nice job of photography work and it is nice to see some of the old time standards being shown, like the brown hackle and the bi-visible.
Keep up the good work.
Larry —sagefisher—
Martin,
Keep on clicking’, there is nothing wrong with those ties. Every insect a fish sees has it’s blemishes…
PT/TB 
Martin,
Those are great flies but I feel your pain with macro-photography. Every time I look at photos of my stuff all I can do is find the blemishes. The way I see it, it makes you a better tier.
Keep on posting those photos, nice work!
Alberto
That’s a great point. Ha! If they did I wouldn’t catch anything.
The scruffier the better Martin. Besides I put my nose right up to my screen and still didn’t find the mess you talked about!
Nice job man.
Jeremy.
Thanks for the friendly words! It just struck me that the better our equipment gets, the clearer it shows our limitations 
I’ll post some more in a separate post.
Mart
www.flylab.nl
Good evening Martin,
are your flies only for show presentation or do you like ti catch some fishes with it?
The fishes are not interested on your little mistakes ;).
Hi Uwe,
All my flies are fishing flies, and that’s exactly why I want to tie them as best as I can. And of course there is also joy in a nicely made thing in itself - that’s probably also the reason you put so much time and effort in your tool stand, right?
Martin, are you and Hans in some sort of competition over there? There appear to be an awful lot of very well tied flies in the Netherlands.
Regards,
Ed
No Ed, no competition between us at all. One day when we were on our way to a show in Denmark Hans and I bored the other guys in the car to tears when we discussed the pros and cons of counter ribbing. We went on for 45 minutes :-0