Thistle Fly I
More insects collecting pollen on the thistles at Island View Beach last weekend; this time it is a fly in disguise as a bee.
Again, I tried tone-mapping these images, as well as straight Lightroom processing, as with my recent thistle wasp post. After looking at the previous efforts, and receiving comments from some of you, I revisited the tone-mapped versions of these images and did some noise reduction. It helped a bit – especially for image 4 in the gallery below and not very much for image 2 and 6. I still like the LR4 versions better overall even though parts of the flies, the wings especially, are better in the tone-mapped versions.
All the images are a bit noisy because these are moderately heavy crops. Technical stuff aside, and sticking to the versions that have not been tone-mapped, I really like the backgrounds of these photos.
Check out the gallery below to compare the two kinds of processing for three separate images.
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To open the gallery view below click on any thumbnail, use the arrows to navigate and escape to return to this page.
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- 6 Tonemapped then LR4 processing
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- 5 Lightroom processing only
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- 4 Tonemapped then LR4 processing
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- 3 – Lightroom 4 processing only
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- 2 Tonemapping and then LR4 processing
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- 1 LR4 processing only
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Canon 5Dii, Canon 100mm/f2.8 macro, ISO100, f3.2, 1/200th
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burnt embers 
Great, great set. I do admit I tend to like the tone mapped versions a wee bit more, personally, as I think they pop rather nicely. What exquisite details!
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Hi Toad – I am glad you like them. I think if the tonemapped versions were all that I had posted, I would not have had too many complaints.
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Amazing detail! I love the wings, so delicate yet intricate.
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Thank you! That is what I love about macro photography – it shows all kinds of things we don’t normally get to look at.
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Amazing photos, ehpem! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bee’s wing that clear and detailed – great capture!
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Thanks Lynn! I hate to disappoint you, but you have yet to see a bee’s wing like this. This is a fly, disguised as a bee. Flies have only one pair of wings (and a pair vestigial little stubs of wings that are hard to see) and bees have two pairs of wings. Also, the antennae are quite different. Lots of flies dress up to look like bees and wasps, I think it is to gain some benefit from the latter’s ability to sting; perhaps birds leave them alone..
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Oh, I should have read the fine print – now it all makes sense 🙂
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The backgrounds are well diffused. I particularly like the composition and colour balance in the first two shots.
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Thank you Andy. I actually am learning to set up my backgrounds rather than luck out on them an this was the case with the two that have blue in them (my jeans) which I tried to arrange in a nice way since I could not really move from where I was seated to take this photos.
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The tone mapped versions do carry a lot of fine detail in the bee that I like but at the expense of the background. Be that as it may, the LR versions are really very nicely processed and the and it’s easy to see you started out with great original files. Well done!
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Thanks Ken. That really is for me the take away on these ones – the LR versions are just fine. It was fun to try something different with them, but probably is not going to be worth it much of the time. I have one more set to show where there is less to choose between them, I think. Also, it would be fun to process these as black and white in both methods to see what might be possible that way. Maybe some of these images will show up again without colour, if I get around to it…
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The tone mapping really brings these to life. Very beautiful!
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Thanks Karen, I am glad you like them.
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