For this shot I wanted to capture the detail in the fly's tongue and also keep the eyes in focus. It's a shot I've wanted for a while and it's made difficult due to limited depth of field. I was able to get the shot by using what's known as a "magic angle". Here's how it's done..

Because the area of focus is perpendicular to the lens and the fly's head is rounded away, shooting it head on would have resulted with either the tongue or the eyes being out of focus. That left me with the task of finding a "magic angle" that would put the eyes and the tongue on a similar enough plane for them both to fall in the area of acceptable focus.

I started by shooting slightly from the right. I pushed the focus past the tongue to the top of the eyes, and back to the tip of the tongue. Then I locked in the focus at the bottom left of the frame and tilted the top right into the scene. This created the "magic angle" and put everything I wanted on the same plane resulting in an image that appears to have a lot more depth than is actually there.


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