HIF shot and crop

Very happy with this shot, lots of detail and very sharp at 100% (sadly you do lose a bit when downsizing a jpeg for the forum and there's not much I can do about it). I'm not happy with the harshness - I'd been shooting the same hoverfly and had adjusted FEC accordingly and wasn't getting hot spots on the face, it moved and hovered, I took this shot and voila, hotspots...so far, I'm totally unhappy with E-TTL II, finding E-TTL to be much more accurate, at least for macro shots. I'm going to change CF 14 on the Mark IIn to go from Evaluative to average center metering like the older 1D does and see if that helps. It's almost like the metering completely ignores the insect as the main point of metering/interest and instead concentrates on some other part of the image...

Dave

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Lovely HIF capture Dave. I wouldn't be too hard on the flash system- very hard not to get overexposure on the face facing the flash esp with not much on the left hand side in the BG.

brian V.

Great capture Dave.

Great, with those legs hanging out like a landing gear.

easy to overexpose those white face areas, otherwise vg.

Awesome capture Dave!

About the E-TTL, I think the camera was fooled by trying to light the background. Since it tries to get the whole scene to 18% gray, and since the background is so far away, I believe it put the flash output much higher in an attempt to "properly" expose the scene. It would rather blow out a few highlights on a small object (in this case, the insect) than completely underexpose the rest of the scene.

There isn't a lot you can do about that, other than diffuse the light heavily. That way, even if the flash mis-calculates the brightness, you won't get harsh lighting, just a slightly overexposed image.

Brilliant capture Dave!!!

You should be very happy with these Dave. They are excellent.

If the hovers would allow us the time to sort out a perfect lighting setup, then you could be worried about the flash highlights...

The last time I took an HIF I think I used spot metering.

Thanks guys. I did adjust the FEC after this shot and got two more HIF shots, both good, but not as good as this one Brian and Chris, I think you're right about the metering, although from my experience I do suspect the E-TTL metering with my old and trusty 1D (which uses center weighted average when not using AF, as opposed to the Mark IIn which will use Evaluative) does handle this type of shot better. I have also been using Brian's Coca Cola™ flash diffuser. It does soften the light, but no matter what I do I cannot seem to replicate the even lighting that Brian and others get on a regular basis. Considering the harsh lighting in many of my shots is something I'm desperately trying to improve as I think it's probably my weakest point (followed by composition), it's becoming frustrating as to why I cannot duplicate the softer lighting.

Dave

hmmm sorry Dave miss this post earlier. great shot to me.

Bill