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I think this is Tachinidae. Is genera possible?
Malaise trap. Townsville, Australia.

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I would rather think Muscidae or Anthomyidae.

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Thanks Kahis. I thought the prominent subscutellum made it Tachinidae?

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I'd say it's an anthomyid - I see no subscutellum - just the part of the thorax that runs down to the abdomen :)

By the way Graham, are your photos being over-compressed when you save them? Because they appear very blocky with a massively reduced colour palette.

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Looks like I need to reapraise what I think is the subscutellum.
That is the second time my pics have been commented on in this forum. Very curious. I use normal jpg compression and the picture in this thread looks OK to me. However there is obviously something wrong. Thanks for pointing it out. Not sure what I can do about it though.

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Chris, I have submitted some mosquito pics for the gallery. Could you have a look at them please and tell me what you see? It would be embarasing if they also appear to be of poor quality. I have pride in the quality of my pictures.

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As a general rule of thumb most tachinids (one or two don't obey the rule) have a curved median vein - this fly doesn't so it would be a very odd tachinid ... and the general shape looks more anthomyid-like. The posterior part of the thorax can confuse people because it seems to be a big lump under the scutellum, but a subscutellum will be a smaller, rounded bulge under the scutellum just a bit smaller in thickness than the scutellum itself.

As for the photo quality, it's off - it immediately reminds me of the effect that you get when you save a photo as a 256-colour GIF file (ie. the 16-million colours get massively reduced and the image appears almost posterized with flat blocks of colour) ... but yours is obviously a JPEG so I can only think that the compression setting is set too aggressive - try having a look at the options you get at save time and aiming for a larger file but with better quality. On something like PhotoShop you can set the quality/compression level at about 90% (ie. loosing about 10% of quality) and it will reduce the file size quite a lot. Usually there is not need to go much below 80-90%. :)

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Just had a look at a few of the mosquito photos and they do seem to suffer from the same effect as the others - a blocky, flat colour palette ... the Mansonia shows it less though because there are less colours in the original anyway ... I will let Paul decide if they are OK for the gallery.

To me they just look like over-compressed JPEGs so I would double-check in your software what the compression is set to - and choose something at the other end of the scale, just in case you are misinterpreting what the value means. I know when I looked into my software here the ratio/% didn't seem logical ... 90% compression sounds like you are going to loose a lot of quality but actually it meant the reverse. :)

PS: if you like you are welcome to send me an original photo (uncompressed) and I will have a go with it here - just in case there is some effect being caused in the camera :)

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I think I have been in error with the subscutellum. I was just looking for a bulging lobe below the scutellum and nothing more. Thanks.

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There are no adjustments available to me for jpg. All my pics are scans from a flatbed scanner so that's fair enough re the lack of settings. If you don't mind helping me to get better pics from it that would be great. What I have available is just different file types. Maybe I need to use raw as a starter and adjust file size later.

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Interesting, it might not be compression that is the problem - perhaps it's simply the DPI or scanning resolution that's creating the speckled effect? Are you just scanning the specimens on a flat-bed scanner? Perhaps it needs to be set the highest possible scanning resolution to be able to make sense of such small subjects?

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This is really curious. I wish I could see what you see. I don't see a speckled affect. I use the highest settings. The scanner has twin heads which gives better depth of field than other scanners. Dunno what is going on.

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Chris, I've sought 2nd, 3rd and 4th opinions on this picture and all say there is nothing wrong with it.

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Also I see the same as described by Chris. Speckled effect in all photos. :(

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Thanks for the response. I believe we are seeing different views, here and at diptera.info. But why? It has me puzzled. The picture is high resolution 2400x2400 dpi, and yet you appear to be seeing a low resolution version.

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There is an earlier picture of mine in the gallery, in Nycteriidae. Would you have a look at it please?

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Dear Graeme,


The photo of your Nycteribiidae fly has 70 kB and it has the same problem: too much speckled and it seems like a very low resolution image. Try to save the photos with 185 kB (but I think this will not resolve the problem.. but give a try).
Which photo editor do you use?

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That Nycteribiidae has been used in a publication which should make it adequate quality. It is 2400x2400 dpi which in my opinion is high resolution. Going any higher does not really improve the quality. I don't use a photo editor.

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Could you have a look at the pics on my website "The Insects of Townsville". I started it in 2004 and it has never had a comment re the lack quality of pictures.

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it's the same. I see many speckled photos.

Try to send some photos to me - original photos. I will upload them to here tomorrow.

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The first comment about this picture said it looked like it was created using a massively reduced colour palette. If that were the case then you will not be able to see the rainbow reflection on the wings. Can you?

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Here is another interesting test. The pictures of Ochleratus vittiger are displayed on this page:
http://www.boldsystems.org/views/taxbrowser.php?taxid=6436
Do they look like they are poor resolution?

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I'm going to have to get back to you - I am in and out at the moment and not always online ... Jorge might have some ideas in the meantime :)

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this must be a jpg highly compressed. Also having only around 70 kB decreases a lot the quality of the photo. Try to use a less compressed jpg and saving it as 190 kB, at least. Use adobe photoshop, the SAVE AS FOR WEB option in File menu.
Also send to me some original photos - of this anthomyiidae fly - to my email.

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I think it would help if Graeme could describe the process by which he makes the images - ie. which hardware and then which software it goes into.

The photos in a lot of cases will be good enough for someone to give as good an ID as is possible from photos. but it would be nice to sort out the colour palette flattening that seems to be going on.

If it was me I'd go into PhotoShop and then Import the image from the scanner and the Save for Web and make sure that the settings were for High quality JPEG images ... and see what happens. I noticed from a few of the images Graeme sent me that although the DPI is 2400 the quoted print size is tiny - less than 1 inch so these images are being blown up much greater than the scanned image would expect, so it might be something to do with what the scanner is doing at a low level ... ie. it would never expect an image to be enlarged this far so it wouldn't get spotted normally .... perhaps.

That said, I know Malcolm Storey uses a scanner sometimes and his images don't seem to be all that flat so the process itself should be fine for creating good image ... we just have to find out what's causing the problems in Graeme's case :)