The Fly – up close and personal

Fly

My previous post pointed out that you don’t necessarily need expensive gear in order to take photos, much more important is being there with a camera, otherwise, no picture. Some of you may think this is a little hypocritical considering the number of pictures of insects I have taken this Summer with my much loved macro lens. But, without the macro function on my compact camera, I probably would not have bought the macro lens. It was really this function, and the fantastic pictures I get from my Ixus that got me into photography in the first place.
The picture shown here was also taken with my point and shoot (P&S). There are very few settings I can change, but I can put it on a macro setting. The light at this time of year is variable, and not always great at the time and place you want to take a photo. I had tried taking some pictures of the fly with my macro lens, but, although the sun was out I would have to open my lens to f/7.1 in order to get a decent shutter speed, especially as it was a little breezy. With a macro lens, f/7.1 gives very little depth of field. The resulting pictures were a little less than impressive.
Therefore, out came the Ixus and here is the result. As usual, ISO was set at 200, the camera then selected f/2.8 at 5.8mm, shutter speed 1/1250 secs. Yes, I could have reduced the ISO, but as I didn’t know the shutter speed was that fast then it didn’t occur at the time. (Note to self, adjust ISO setting on Ixus once initial satisfactory shot has been achieved.)
For a few more photos taken with my compact P&S camera, please see my set on Flickr.