Hi all,
This is a fly that i tied last night. Im not quite sure if this is going to work or not so bear with me please. The fly is a thunder and lightening varriant.
Nice fly. Not sure of your camera, but check the manual for the “Macro” feature. See how close you can focus with the macro feature turned on, and do some experimenting. There have been a couple of other threads about taking fly pictures you might check out, plus Al Campbell did a great series of articles on fly photography. That should be in the Features section of this site.
Fly looks good. As REE suggests, if your camera has a dial on it with a bunch of pictures, turn it to the setting with the flower (like a tulip). That’s for taking close up pictures. Frame the shot, zoom in on the fly and measure a distance from the fly to the back of your digital camera The back is “best” because once you know the right distance, you can measure it off and just place the camera there easily (put the back to the line). Anyway, hold down the button half way to focus, and find a spot that is out of focus and “too close”, then snap a picture. Move the camera back by 1 cm (or 1/2 an inch) and take another photo. Do a series like this and keep track of the distance for each photo. Then, when you unload your camera shots, you can map out the distance that works best. For example, my camera is best when the back of the camer is 43 cm from the fly. Once you’ve got that distance down, you’ll find it never fails to produce an “in focus” shot.
It is a nice looking fly. Here are two tips that will bring you home in showing it at its best.
I have the best luck not using the macro feature. I learned from using my 35mm SLR years ago that I could get great closeup pictures using the zoom with a telephoto lens. I setup, hand held, about 3 feet away from the fly and use the telephoto zoom on my Canon to produce the closeup. It worked before the cameras had the tulip and it still works unless the target is extremely tiny. KISS
Next use “” so that the pic displays automatically, and so that we do not have to click to see it. Like this:
look at this message in quote mode to see what I am doing.
A lot of folks use the links to photos to keep from using so much bandwidth on the site. A resize of the photo would also help with the need to scroll to see the whole photo.
I don’t know if the old threads are still available via a search in the archives, but there have been some
fine ideas and hints posted on this site for improving fly pics.
I’m not particularly talented in the photography department by any means, but have a couple thoughts in addition to those stated.
You might consider photographing your fly upright, with the backdrop at least several inches behind the fly.
That should help focus attention on the fly and reduce the shadows somewhat.
To further help with shadows, you might consider using additional sources of light to fill or eliminate those shadows.
I think I can see the deviations from the traditional T&L patterns. Nice job. Is there any background on this
particular variant that you can share?
As to how to improve on the fly image, it would be helpful if you could provide some information on your camera make&model, and whether you applied specific settings for taking this shot.
All I did was quote you. It seems like what you have should be working. Pretend you are going to quote this message and look at how the “” is laid out. That is how I ultimately figured out how to make pictures pop up when i was learning it.