Pretty fly

(1780 x 1780)

My first insect "studio stack". This is large fly of some common species.

Gear: "snowflake" macro setup, containing Canon Powershot A650 and reversely mounted Helios 44M-5 as magnifier (here its description and photos) + small desktop tripod (Continent F7).

Light: ambient daylight in room + direct sunlight from left side through sheet of white paper. Background: light blue book cover.

Source images: serie of 64 photos (16 groups with different focus, and each group contained 4 identical images for averaging). After RAW processing, i averaged images in groups and then do focus stacking.

Eye details without resizing:

Twelve months

(1765 * 1324)

Another 12-sided snowflake. This crystal was bigger, around 5 millimeters in diameter, and slightly harder to process (complicated shape and many ice debris in close proximity). Previous 12-sided snowflake: Wheel of time.

Glass background with backlight, additional lens Helios 44M-5, january 2014, Moscow. 8 RAWs averaged.

Alternate colors:

(1765 * 1324)

This snowflake as desktop wallpaper in wallpapers section:

More snowflakes in album snowflakes and snow crystals.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.