Fly eye and tiny orange fly

These are my best recent attempts at macro. It's definitely a challenge to capture something in focus!

I think I had the 1.4 and a tube on the 100 2.8 for these.

Fly eye iso200, 1/400, f9

orange fly iso200, 1/400, f8

both w/flash

TIA for any advice you may have.

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First impressions of the images were strong and positive. I'd have wanted to see more depth in the first photo, and perhaps more light too. I like the sharp detail of the eye and golden face. Can't decide on the second one. Maybe if the green leaf were more saturated? Good work nonetheless, and let's see more!

Both are under exposed and have incorrect WB Sharpness seems good

Omri Alon wrote:
Both are under exposed and have incorrect WB Sharpness seems good

After seeing your comments, I tried to lighten them up a bit here at home- but they both have hot spots that become ugly very quickly with any additional brightness or contrast. Perhaps I misunderstand what you mean or I don't have a clue how to fix it. Feel free to edit and explain please?

As far as white balance goes- that's just over my head at this point in my photography education. Can you explain and /or demonstrate?

You cannot fix the exposure if it wasn't shot in RAW. If not shot in RAW, the WB is very hard to fix. It is done in PS (I don't know how to do it).
In different lighting situations (sunny,cloudy, tungstan, etc...), the color of the light is different. Correct WB is when the white looks like white (i.e. not yellowish).

Pics look sharp but are dark.
You can sometimes get away with selecting the bright areas in PS inverse the selection and then lighten the rest. Do you have a diffuser on your flash?- this helps a bit with hot spots but does not eliminate them entirely.
Brian V.

i agree that they look a little dark........... if you shoot in RAW mode it is way easier to process your images (with way more control than jpeg)

a thing i have found with tcons tho is that they tend to lose a little detail (only to be expected because the more glass the light has to pass through the more the quality degrades

Hope you don't mind me trying to improve your image.
similar to what lordV said. Selected highlights, inverse, adjust levels, increase saturation, added small amount of USM.
Dai

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