Two from this morning

[footman]

Gymnochiromyia sp. (With thanks to @Ajophotog for ID)

Spiky flower from the garden focus stacked in Affinity Photo.

 

[alfbranch]

Very nice work on the fly but have a look at the halos on the flower

 

[footman]

Very nice work on the fly but have a look at the halos on the flower

Thanks for pointing this out Alf, I must confess I hadn't seen them. I know that many focus stacked images require "cleaning up" of these artefacts and I've done some reading around the subject. Two things have emerged for me, one is that using a focussing rail works by moving the camera to cover the depth of the subject and it is this that produces halos. Focussing by lens does not produce so much of this effect.

The other thing is the quality of engineering of the focus rail itself. I used the Sunwayfoto rail for this image and when using the zoom in feature of my Sony A6000 I notice that there is some small lateral movement of the image when the control knob is turned. I have an older Velbon Mag Slider around so I will check that one for movement.

The writers of the Zerene software advocate focussing by lens rather than by rail to avoid these artefacts. I would be grateful for your comments.

 

[JohnC6]

These aren't the best shots but I've seen these insects swimming in our pond water and the bright sunshine lately (now mostly gone)prompted me to see what I could get. When I got them on my computer I realised they were upside down clinging onto the surface. I Googled 'pond insects' and came up with them. Common Backswimmer.They have red eyes and a jabbing prong up front which can cause a painful injury.They were difficult to take. I used a 5D11 with the 100-400 Mk 11 with the 1.4X (easier than my Canon Macro 100mm f2.8) and had to focus manually and they stop for only a second or two.

 

[Deleted member 3428]

not too shabby John considering you were shooting into a pond.