Taking pictures of flies

[woollywilma 0]

I can focus with the lense right up on the fly. I don't have the info with me, but it's 3 cm, maybe closer I think. I just got the camera and I've only taken a few pics of our 6 week old baby girl and took a couple shots of a size 18 pheasant tail. The lighting I used was just the room light and the vise light. The picture was nice & well focussed, but I had to load it on the 'puter and play with it to make it big. I think the camera is the C700 series. I forget the exact model. It's got 4.0 m.pixels.

[vladimir 0]

Okay Adam,

it could be model C750 UZ(Ultra Zoom) as that model is 4mpx. or C765, C770. No matter which model we are exactly speaking about, they have similar functions. Super Macro mode has range of 3cm focusing, on each of these cameras, and unfortunately, it looks like wide angle locked in that mode. So you get what you get shooting from 3cm, and that's maximum of close-up. In normal macro mode your camera focuses 0.07m- 0.6m (Wide); 1.2m – 2m (Tele). Unfortunately, only way to get raw image as 'zoomed' as you'd like is to buy macro conversion lens, which would shorten focusing distance even further. Otherwise taking a photograph in super macro mode at 4mpx would leave you with big raw image, and cropping it with Photoshop (or other image manipulating software of your choice) should give you satisfying result.

I hope this would help you understand a little bit more about macro digital photography.

 

Cheers

Vladimir

 

[woollywilma 0]

Vladimir,

Thanks for the tips. My camera is a c-750 ultra zoom. I'm a bit confused by your post / terminology, though. Remember, I'm a comoplete novice; it's all Greek to me. I guess what you're telling me is that I can't zoom in for what you call a "raw image" that will look big and fill my frame while I'm taking the picture. But, I can do that on photoshop afterwards. I'm not sure of the difference between super macro and macro, and I'm not sure why I have to switch camera modes to use one or the other. Isn't enlarging via compute bad because I'll loose too much resolution? Or, is 4 mega pixils good enough so that won't make too much of a difference? What's this about a macro filter? Is that worth it for me? Sorry for my ignorance. - Adam

[vladimir 0]

No problem Adam, I'll try to get down on basics.

Btw. it's obvious that English is not my native lang. so excuse me. Terminology "Raw image/material" is used usually in media (TV, Press, etc.) and stands for image/material which has not been edited. It's kind of technical slang I don't know much about Olympus camera software, but I guess, that super macro is digitally enhanced mode, which means when you set your camera in that mode, you get fixed focal length, and I guess 2.5x to minimum focusing distance. You know, one of those "groovy" features which sells product? Well, that's my opinion, I really never tested Olympus Cameras, and I could be wrong. Purchasing macro filter/lens could be an option if you really need to get that close, and its matter of life and death. I guess that's not the case, but I've mentioned it because it can be a solution for someone who really needs that feature.

I don't know what would you like to do with images but maximum size of images taken with C750 is 3,200 x 2,400 which is quite big. Cropping that image in Photoshop will decrease that image size depending on how much you crop. It's difficult to explain, but let say if you crop image on half, you'll end up with image size of 1600 x 1200 which is still considerably good resolution It really depends on what is image used for afterwards, but for web presentations it should be more than good.

Feel free to ask anything else, specially if you didn't understand my Greek

 

Cheers

Vladimir

[jjn 0]

Turn your camera to manual focus while using the macro setting. If your camera is like mine, you will need to hit the up/down arrow keys to initiate the focus. You should be able to focus down to about 1" from the front of your lens. A sub-focus screen should appear and you can see the part of the fly come in and out of focus when pressing the arrow keys.

 

Even with sufficient overhead lighting your shutter speed will probably quite slow so you might want to use a remote (if you have one) or the shutter self-timer setting. I set my camera to aperature priority mode so I can control the depth-of-field. Be sure to take photos at all your available f-stops. You really can't see the final result of youe exposure and focus until you up-load the photos to your pc.

 

 

[Guest]

Some flatbed scanners work beter than others. At home we have a cheap Mustek scanner which works ok, but some times doesn't do so well on beadheads, poppers and other flies with alot of three dimensional character. At work at the chemistry department we have a really nice HP scanner, which handles all flies very well (and yes they let me use it to scan flies, but only during lunch). I think they let me use it since I'm the one who knows the most about the ins and outs of the program for it, and I end up helping most people doing their scans. I've also done a bit o photography of flies with both film and digital, butour digital camera isn't very good in macro mode. Had no problem with the film cameras, and all the advice you've gotten here so far is right on. I do most of my stuff with a scanner these days, mainly because it's quick and i'm lazy, I just don't rreally have the time to set up the lighting for the film camera.

 

Mark Delaney