Robber Fly

I shot these pictures in a studio using a tripod-mounted Canon 5D Mark II with a 24-70mm lens turned backward and attached to the camera with a 77mm reversing ring (necessary if you want to mount a lens in reverse). I lit the shots with two Speedotron studio strobes.

Any macro lens will work, but the reversing ring helps get your ratio to 1:1, which is the definition of true macrophotography. I chose the 24-70mm lens because it is one of my sharpest. And after doing some online research, I learned that if you reverse a lens, which works by reducing larger images, it will instead magnify the images. All of these shots were taken at ISO 100 with an aperture of F/22. A flash is crucial to supply enough light to shoot at F/22.

With a Canon lens, you need to set your aperture, hold down the depth of field preview button, then remove the lens and attach it to your reversing ring. Use the smallest aperture possible to increase the depth of field. At F/22 you get a few millimeters depth of field, with anything lower than F/16 you only get a small sliver of focus on the insect.

Because you are at F/22, you need to have an additional light source to help focus, and in this case, I used a Coleman LED headlamp attached to the front of my lens.

Focusing is crucial, and to help I often turned on my camera’s live view, cranked the ISO up to 25,000 and used the focus magnification to make sure I was tack sharp on the insect eyes.

All of the insects I photographed were deceased, allowing me to pose and work with them over a longer period of time. In the field, the same principles apply, you just need to have more patience, sunscreen and insect repellent.      -Kyle Green

Resources:

http://photo.net/learn/macro/

http://www.beautifulbugs.com/beautifulbugs/howto.htm

http://www.bugguide.net

For pest insects identification in Virginia: http://www.insectid.ento.vt.edu/fact-sheets/index.html