That's a very nice shot Troy. I missed them mating. I did get one of the flies cleaning itself, but it's not as good as this. It's going to take me a while to work through all 71 images lol.
Thanks guys. I've since had them ID'd, and believe it or not, the common name is big-headed flies. Haha.
H - good idea. I've added a slight vignette. That what you had in mind? The background in the original was natural - bokeh from some twig/branch in the bg.
It's something that I employ in all my wedding photography. In Digital Photo Professional, I disable Peripheral Illumination Correction, and, it adds just the right amount of vignetting.
Thanks JJJ and Chris. I was using my new Sigma 150 lens - giving it a bit of a test run for the first time. Very happy with the results.
The flash I'm using here is the Canon MT-24EX twin-light, and I have velcro'd a couple of Lumiquest Ultrabounces on the heads to diffuse the light a little. It's a very specialised flash only for macro work, and I wouldn't recommend it as a first flash for anyone unless you only shoot macro.
If you want to use a speedlight as Dennis has suggested, you could get a 580EXII if you want heaps of power for other shooting. If it's mainly for macro you could get something a little less powerful like the 430EXII or even a third party E-TTL flash like Sunpak or something like this Sigma. Just make sure you get a diffuser - something like Lumiquest Softbox is great, that's what Andrew "astro_south" is using if you've seen his shots.
