I would like to thank everyone who has responded to my request. You have helped me sort out my thoughts and settle my feelings about this issue.
Your responses
I posed the same questions on three forums that I currently frequent which include close-up/macro in their subject matter. I am posting this response in all three forums.
I have received 16 responses, as follows:
Respondents varied in their experience with close-up/macro, ranging from experts through to non-practitioners.
Unsurprisingly, opinions differed, although not as much as I expected.
One respondent, who has a long history and deep competence with this sort of subject matter did not like either of the images (as explained in
this post) for two reasons: lack of detail in the eyes and unappealing compositions.
For everyone else it seemed to be (with some variety of course) along the lines of "eye detail is very important, and one should strive to get it, but images can be appealing / worthwhile / enjoyable to look at even if they lack eye detail; it depends on what else is in the image, such as details of body/head/legs and composition".
This response included the following, which is a thought I will take away from this exercise and try to keep in mind: "The second image with the less than sharp compound eye detail draws attention to the fact that detail is less than sharp."
From
this response, another thought I'll take away from this is along the lines of "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good".
My response
My questions arose from some responses to recent comments I have made about how the tiny aperture technique I'm currently using destroys fine detail. Lack of eye detail in insects seems to me to be where this is most apparent.
It isn't that this technique means that eye detail is impossible to capture, as I think these three examples from yesterday illustrate if you look at them at 100%.
1891 05 2021_05_15 DSC09972_PLab4 LR 1300h DNAI DNAIc by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
1891 15 2021_05_15 DSC00014_PLab4 LR 1300h DNAI DNAIc by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
1891 30 2021_05_15 DSC00072_PLab4 LR 1300h DNAI DNAIc by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
But with this technique you have to get quite close in to capture eye detail. In each case, as shown below, there are examples from further out which lack eye detail. Especially for the second of these I would hope to see eye detail at this scale. For the third one, with the eyes being so small, I'm not surprised or particularly troubled about not being able to see eye detail. I'm not sure about the first one. I have a feeling bees' eye detail may be more difficult to pick up at this scale than flies' eye detail, but I'm not sure about that.
There are also intermediate examples where there is the beginnings of some eye detail but it looks poor quality. I think I'll be wary about posting that sort of image in future.
However, as a result of the responses I've received in this thread I'll be more relaxed about posting images like the ones below, with only a residual, slightly uneasy feeling that experts in this field may find them unsatisfactory. But it's the best I can manage at the moment, and that will have to do.
Once again, my sincere thanks for helping me with this.
1891 01 2021_05_15 DSC09946_PLab4 LR 1300h DNAI DNAIc by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
1891 13 2021_05_15 DSC00024_PLab4 LR 1300h DNAI DNAIc by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
1891 25 2021_05_15 DSC00059_PLab4 LR 1300h DNAI DNAIc by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
--
Nick
Summary of photo activity since 2007
https://fliesandflowers.blogspot.com/2019/01/when-i-retired-in-2006-i-had-it-in-mind.html
Flickr image collections
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gardenersassistant/collections/
Blog
https://fliesandflowersetc-ramblings.blogspot.com/
