They are flies..

ronlane · Jul 24, 2015

but they aren't flying.

1) Horse fly.

mnpjuly-21-Edit.jpg by Ron Lane, on Flickr

2) Damsel fly.

mnpjuly-20-Edit.jpg by Ron Lane, on Flickr

baturn · Jul 24, 2015

Nice!

ronlane · Jul 24, 2015

Thanks Brian.

ShahanaPinky · Jul 27, 2015

Awesome. Great shots !

beagle100 · Jul 27, 2015

nice fly shot

PropilotBW · Jul 27, 2015

Nice shots! I hate those horse flies. They're a pain!!

Overread · Jul 27, 2015

What's the lighting you used for both these shots? They both look very "hot" around any areas of white - might just be midday shooting and thus very strong ambient but I'm not 100% certain.

ronlane · Jul 27, 2015

It was about 4:00 pm and the sun was the main light, but I did have my on camera flash up on these. I had it -1 stop flash exposure comp on most of my macro stuff.

Overread · Jul 28, 2015

Hmm I wonder if even with -1 the flash is still overpowering the shot. You can see very clearly on the horse fly that large areas of its body are near pure white; and unless you added a vignette its showing very strong light in the centre and dark in the boarders.

You might want to try a few things:
1) Higher ISO and no flash
2) Use a diffuser to try and break the flash light up - something that simply blocks the light isn't enough, you need to increase the area - a sheet of paper or something similar held in front of the flash might work well if you can fix it into position (remember diffusion isn't about the "power" so much as it is about the area - the large the source area of light relative to the subject the softer the light will be).
3) Manual flash power settings - might take a bit of fiddling around, but it should help if the flash is constantly picking too high a power point by default.

ronlane · Jul 28, 2015

Overread, it could be. I use the FC at anywhere from -1 to -3 most of the time. I did not think that it would overpower the sun on this particular day, but I guess it did or enhanced it too much. (On the horse fly.)

On the damsel fly, that is the sun causing all of that. I don't think that the flash did anything to this shot other than help stop motion, well it may have helped with fill a little.

I agree that I need to get something to help diffuse the light when doing this type of work. I will search for something to help with that. (Maybe one of the Gary Fong diffusers)

I am still working on macro and for using 3 extension tubes on a 70-200mm f/4L, handheld and using on-camera flash, I have improved.

PS: There is a little bit of vignette added in LR.