A couple of flies - or "DOF vs. Detail"

Some flies from the last days - shot either with an Olympus E-M1II or an Sony a6600, on both cameras with a combination of 2x teleconverter, extension tube and 1:1 macro lens to get really good magnifications at larger distances to these quite jumpy insects who don't like to be visited too closely. Magnifications are mostly in the regions between 2x to 3x, a double or single flash setup was used with different methods of diffusion.

Here a selection.

#1: My favorite one for overall detail. Taken in the evening, with the fly resting its forelegs lazily on a lilac leaf. Oly with its 4/3 sensor, f13 for a deep DOF, at that magnification effective something between f40 or f50:

#2 is taken with the same setup as the first one and shows that also the position of the camera towards the subject is important for "felt" or perceived DOF. Again a fly on a lilac leaf:

#3 is taken again with the same setup as the first two. Here a slightly diagonal perspective offers a compromise between detail and perceived "shallow" DOF at the same aperture. This fly rested on a white rose petal:

#4 shows a fly on a hydrangea leaf, here taken with an APS-C sensor, with the macro lens set at f16 or f22 (aperture unfortunately wasn't recorded in this case, the lens was fully manual). Again position towards the subject and achieved DOF - due to the stopped down aperture - add up to nice overall detail IMO:

#5 uses the same setup as #4, but the angle influences DOF again. Blow fly on a hydrangea bloom:

Those first five pics rely on an approach that involves heavy PP, because those pictures are taken way beyond any diffraction limit and at comparatively high ISOs - both tolls of the closed down and effective apertures used. So they need denoising and sharpening in PP. The result is a compromise with less resolution and some loss of tiny structures. But IMO that compromise is one worth to make, because in hand held photography of live insects it's really not easy to get a lot of DOF at large magnifications. You can of course can try stacking (and some people manage to do that successfully indeed), but my skills are definitely not good enough doing this hand held.

The "loss of tiny structures" I mentioned is most apparent if you look at the compound eyes of the flies #1-#5: you see kind of smooth looking eyes in #1, 2 and 4, and only a small region in the eyes showing their structure in #3 and #5. Because both high ISOs and diffraction eat away at those kind of fine detail I can do two things to alleviate the problem: Use a stronger light setup (something for the future to try, simply need more powerful flashes which have enough reserves for the strong diffusion necessary) to get ISO down, or open up the aperture to achieve the same - this time of course with a price to pay in shallower DOF, but gaining the benefit of less diffraction softness.

Here two pictures of a fly taken with the Olympus again, this time with the lens stopped down to "only" f8, giving an effective aperture of around f24 to 36. I was able to use ISO 500 here (but already had to lift exposure a bit in PP because the flash was at its limits).

#6:

For a second picture of the same fly I moved closer and got this "head shot" - #7:

In both pictures the eye detail can be found, but real and perceived DOF is of course shallower compared to #1-5.

Both approaches - going for DOF or for tiny details - have their merits IMO. I like the general "feel" of "full body length" detail especially in #1 and #4, and of course am also intrigued by the eye structure especially in #7.

The great thing about photography is that there are so many approaches out there which can lead to nice results, even if they have their different strengths and weaknesses.

Phil