Taking good photos of flies?

[goodfortune]

I'd like to post some photos of the flies I'm tying for the Jam, to get some of your feedback. However, I'm having trouble taking good pictures of my flies. Alot of the pics are either coming out too bright, out of focus (using the camera's macro function) or both.

Any ideas of how to take good photos of flies? Ideas for backgrounds, lighting, camera settings...anything that comes to mind will be helpful. Thanks as always guys

P.S. - I can post the make/model of my digital camera this evening if it would help; let me know.

 

[MKern]

Flash off and light the area from all angles.

Use a neutral colored background like light blue or tan.

A tripod helps keep it steady.

Also, read the manual on how close you macro can work. If you get it too close it will be blurry.

 

[tobewan77]

i've found a tripod pretty close to mandatory. The human hand is simply not steady enough taking photos of something that small.
OR place the camera on a book or something with a timer delay, that way your finger isn't causing any shake when pressing the shutter release.

Nice light color backgrounds to bring out the colors and shades in the fly.

Diffuse your light somehow. Bounce the light off some poster board, a sheet. Something like that.

have fun, shoot a lot. It's digital, can trash any you don't like.

 

[gutcutter]

all of the above - and when you pull the flies up on your computer and they look too small, edit them w crop etc. the high quality digital cameras have exceptional quality when zoomed in close after the picture is already taken.
gut

 

[goodfortune]

Thanks guys; I put some pics in a new post a few minutes ago. Let me know what you think.