I spent some quality time in our car port this morning, playing with some extreme macro photography using insects sitting on my car as models. Here’s a robber fly, family Asilidae, which was kind enough to sit patiently on my rear window while I popped flashes and bracketed focus for a minute or so.
This final image is a composite of four shots with slightly different focal points, manually blended in Photoshop. The original frames were taken with my Olympus 60mm f/2.8 macro lens mounted in front of a 21mm of extension tube. Lighting was courtesy of a 2-head Flashpoint MF12 macro flash.
This was the first time I’ve tried using extension tubes with the macro lens and I’m really impressed with the results. The magnification I can achieve with this setup is fabulous though it does mean that I’m working very close to the subject, probably around 2 inches in this case.
For the technically inclined...