Stuart Ord
July 2025 - Fly
About the Image(s)
I found this fly on a weed whilst hunting for subjects one evening. It was getting dark, but so what, our cameras can be pretty amazing. So I shot a focus bracket and hoped.
In the computer, I merged about the first 4 photos in Helicon, to keep the background blurred but make the weed head sharp. After processing the resultant DNG in Affinity to lighten the fly and darken the background mainly, as the merge had blurred the edge of its left eye, it needed a little clone brush help from one of the images in the bracket. It was still pretty noisy, so I ran it through Topaz Denoise with the parameter for Remove Noise cranked up to 75%.
OM Systems OM1, Olympus 30mm macro lens, 1/125 sec at f8, ISO 20,000.
6 comments posted
Margaret West
Wow. I am impressed. The head of the fly is slightly soft but still an amazing job! I like the muted colors and the angle of the fly on the weed. The DOF is super, I love the blurred honeycomb appearance of the background. Posted: 07/07/2025 06:07:41
Stuart, I am amazed on the detail you managed with such little light and such a high ISO. The color combination is beautiful and the background blur works very well. Posted: 07/08/2025 22:11:56
Thank you. It's always a nice surprise, I think, when a photo comes out much better than you thought it would, such as here! Posted: 07/09/2025 18:41:41
This is a very cool photo...and the muted tones works so well for the subject matter!!
That background is fantastic. Well done!! I did see what Margaret was saying about the head of the fly when I enlarged the image, but not to any troubling degree. After denoising, did you sharpen a bit? The denoising always make stuff a teeny bit soft. Or you could put more contrast onto your fly which would make it stand out more while looking sharper. What a great image!!
Posted: 07/10/2025 17:56:15
That background is fantastic. Well done!! I did see what Margaret was saying about the head of the fly when I enlarged the image, but not to any troubling degree. After denoising, did you sharpen a bit? The denoising always make stuff a teeny bit soft. Or you could put more contrast onto your fly which would make it stand out more while looking sharper. What a great image!!
Posted: 07/10/2025 17:56:15
Thanks, Carol.
Macro and focus stacking sometimes throw out odd artefacts as we all know, and sometimes it's hard to figure out what the camera and computer saw to give the result. The left eye was a bit confused, and I tried to clone from the appropriate image in the bracket to fix it, but it still didn't work cleanly. My subsequent hand/mouse art work is not that of an artist! I'm lazy, I have a graphics tablet that should make manual corrections easier to do, but I usually forget.
Being an awfully high ISO I did use Topaz Denoise with sharpen and denoise both set to high levels. I don't usually sharpen again after that, eg in Affinity, but it's worth a try I guess. Over the summer I can't find the time to do much of anything as there are so many things to do! Posted: 07/15/2025 21:51:44
Macro and focus stacking sometimes throw out odd artefacts as we all know, and sometimes it's hard to figure out what the camera and computer saw to give the result. The left eye was a bit confused, and I tried to clone from the appropriate image in the bracket to fix it, but it still didn't work cleanly. My subsequent hand/mouse art work is not that of an artist! I'm lazy, I have a graphics tablet that should make manual corrections easier to do, but I usually forget.
Being an awfully high ISO I did use Topaz Denoise with sharpen and denoise both set to high levels. I don't usually sharpen again after that, eg in Affinity, but it's worth a try I guess. Over the summer I can't find the time to do much of anything as there are so many things to do! Posted: 07/15/2025 21:51:44
this is a wonderful shot. light on the subject is great how it pops it out behind a similar green background - perfect background without off color spots/holes. detail in the main subject is great. then there is the fly which is a bonus - it practically looks all in focus [head?]. this color fly keeps the tones similar rather than it being a yellow insect. so sooting to look at also. Posted: 07/13/2025 00:17:23