Posted by Tony T on 05-08-2008 15:52
#7
Nosferatumyia wrote:
It is a Rhagoletis fausta (Osten Sacken) female, the American black cherry fly, BTW, as I recall, recently introduced into Europe...
The snapshots are, as always, excellent. Do you use fiberoptics for your flash? If yes, who supplies that stuff?
Thanks for the ID. This fly does look a lot like
Euleia but I was a bit suspicious as it is a pest of parsnips and I live in a city where I doubt there are any parsnips grown. But we do have lots of wild cherry.
I am sure fiberoptics would work but I use a single flash, off the camera. The flash is a Nikon SB800 which can be adjusted from full power to 1/128 power in 1/3 stop intervals. I use it on manual settings and thus can get great control over the amount of light (duration of flash).
I use a foam coffe cup to diffuse the light, flash is angled so that the light strikes the top of the cup and the inside bottom of the cup; also hits the inside sides of the cup. The result is that the entire cup becomes a light source.
The fly is either pinned to the back of the cup (for dorsal and lateral views) or to the extra foam strip on the cup bottom (for frontal view) - just visible in the photo. The 'trick' is to make sure that the flash does not directly illuminate the fly.
A very cheap and effective method.