Tachinid Fly, originally uploaded by john.king.
This was a rare day with almost no wind. Actually I was trying to find a small blue butterfly that I’ve seen around the Forget-me-not flowers and spotted this tachinid fly (Epalpus signifer).
This was shot RAW with my 70mm Sigma macro from about 18 inches away. I couldn’t get any closer without trampling the flowers. This image was heavily cropped. I was using a monopod and the D7000 camera settings were f6.3 at 1/250 ISO 100.
Looking at my settings in LR, sharpening is set to 63 and detail is set to 45 which is a bit more than I would normally use. The other settings are at their default levels. I decreased luminance in the green channel to darken the background, and dodged the abdomen of the fly very lightly to bring out a bit of texture. Everything else looks like default settings including white balance “as shot”.
JK,
This photo is in Sigma’s website samples ….. Congrats
http://www.sigmaphoto.com/shop/70mm-f28-ex-dg-macro-sigma
Thanks for letting me know! The Sigma 70mm is a great lens.