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Posted by mark on Jun 12 2015 in Insect Photography, Focus Stacking, Extreme Macro
  • « Portrait of a Crane Fly
  • Common Snipe Fly (Rhagio mystaceus) »

Bee Mimicking Fly

I noticed this fly on the walk leading towards my house. It was making a loud buzzing noise and furtively thrashing on the ground, unable ot fly (despite the wings going like mad) and seemed to be in its death throes. I put in a plastic film canister and then into the freezer. Click on the image for a lager view: 

Bee Mimicking Fly

Bee Mimicking Fly

It was fairly large and magnification here is just under 2.5x. I am not sure what the fly is - possibly a Syrphid fly though nothing I look at seems to match up. 

Made with a Pentax K3, DFA 50mm f2.8 macro, and extension tubes. 284 stacked images. For this session I experimented  with making 2 detailed stacks - 81 and 62 images - and then 4 fairly casual stacks ranging from 50 to just 20 images. This resulted in 6 separate stacks of the subject which were then combined - some were almost complete, others where very banded, but in combination they came together well.

I also tried to improve the background a bit, in this case I picked up a scrap of junk mail with a rather nice graphic on it and stuck it a few inches behind the subject.

Reference image:

Bee Mimicking Fly
Bee Mimicking Fly

This entry was posted by Mark and filed under Insect Photography, Focus Stacking, Extreme Macro.

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