I suppose I broke just about every photography "rule" last night when i saw this guy flying around the lights outside my garage. Looks like he'd flown into a spiderweb, he flitted around a bit when i first started using the flash, but then he just lay back and accepted it, so I got a fair few shots to choose from.
So, macro-shot with a non macro lens, check (70-300L with full set of kenko tubes, 2nd best option though).
On-camera 7D flash instead of macro ring-flash, check.
Handheld instead of tripod, check (tripod only gets 3' high, this guy was 4-5' up. IS helped, but not as much as at long-focus).
M, f/10 at 1/60s, ISO400. probably in the limits of diffraction for extra DOF, all the other shots were iso100 but this one was 400 to brighten it up a bit.
But most of all, a 70-300L with a full Kenko set at MFD is only a few cm from the glass. The on-camera flash was totally shadowed by the lens, but reflected a lot off the white plaster on the wall, and gave it the weird electron-microscope look.
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So now the question is how I edit it. The first shot is the camera-JPG, of which i liked the effect, washed out and darkly spooky. The second shot is my first go at DPP raw-conversion, i think it's too contrasty and probably will crank it back next time. The third is a quick and dirty B+W (using DPP processing in 'monochrome'). The last is a 100% crop of the second, the eyes are perfectly focussed, but the hairs on his nose stick out a bit too much into fuzzy territory (and a bit of noise visible too).
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I processed the RAWs with 1/1 noise reduction when i thought they were iso100 like the others, i might go to 2/1 or 2/2 next round.
Both were contrast 2, highlight 0, shadow -2, sharpness 4, ALO strong. Flash WB with tuning 212 tone / 123 sat.
The colour was 0.67EV, coloUr tone 1, saturation 1.
The B+W was +0.83EV, filter yellow.
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So which looks the best? I doubt i'll ever see a dragonfly again at night, so what i've got is all i'm getting. I'm going to keep playing with them for a while, should i go for more contrast and definition like the 2nd shot, of washed-out and spooky-looking camera-JPG (first shot)?
