First pic on here, be kind. Back-to-front lens picture of a fly. I stopped down to f/8 to get the awesome depth of field you can see - otherwise it's paper thin. ISO 500 (Just because I can now ) 0.3s with mirror lockup
wow! how the hell did you manage that without the fly flying away and the merest hint of you coming towards him?
Yeah, it's dead I'm afraid. The end of the lens was less than 1cm away from the fly, and with a depth of field of WAY less than 1mm, there's no chance of getting a decent shot that close-up on anything that moves. I don't have a reverse mount (might buy one though), but I did do a bit of a ghetto mod with string to attach the lens to the camera without having to hold it. And no, it wasn't on a turd. It was actually on a BLACK book, and I cropped nothing. I can't quite work out why the background is, well, white.
If you catch a fly, or other flying insect, you can put it in the freezer for a short period of time and it will go into a hibernation type state. It should be asleep long enough to take a picture, once it warms up it will be fine.
Tell that to the fly. I'm quite sure he'll find it most disagreeable. That said, it's a cool idea. Pun very much intended. Anyways, nice photo. I've always been into those crazy-close macros. And unlike some hornet that someone did in macro once, it didn't quite freak me out
Maybe it's a combination of reflected light, as well as your camera metering to expose for a dark fly, hence blowing out and overexposing the background? Seeing this, I too should grab a reverse lens mount. I wonder what would happen if I tried to do it with a long focal lenth. Reverse 200mm anyone?
I tried my 55-200 on reverse and it did nothing at all. Couldn't get anything to show up whatsoever. Guess it's just certain lenses that work - A reason to keep hold of the Canon kit lens, anyway. You wouldn't want 200mm anyway - the magnification works in reverse so wider lens backwards = more magnification. Although I think for that picture, the lens (18-55) was at about 35mm ish - Any wider and you get too close and have zero DOF. EDIT: It was taken in manual mode and I know why it was like that really - the book was shiny with light being reflected directly into the camera and the shallow depth of field meant that any detail was completely removed.
