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Housefly closeup

[edit]
A female Lesser Brown Blowfly on a white background (note: this image has been re-uploaded with a revised file name)

Behold that loathsome and disgusting pest, the common housefly Lesser Brown Blowfly, in high detail! Not the most pretty subject, but technically I think it is very good. Specimen was a live adult, and about 15mm long.

  • Support Self Nom --Fir0002 10:17, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nice, but are you sure about the species? It looks a bit odd to me. --Dschwen 10:20, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Very nice capture. Depth of field cannot realy be expected to be any better in a single exposure. Good focus on the details that matter. As you said, this fly was live, but did you try putting it in the fridge for a while to 'settle its nerves'?  ;-) If you have more time to work with it, perhaps try taking a few photos with varying focus points so you can create a composite with more of it in focus. I've never tried it myself, but I've seen a few good implementations. Eg here. Question: What aperture and light arrangement did you use? Is the surface edited out (not really a problem since it evidently wasn't an au naturale shot anyway, and doesn't necessarily have to be). Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 10:30, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I did try it: Image:Fly focus bracket.jpg but it's more of a technical exercise as the fly is clearly collapsing under its weight! Also I didn't take enough gradation and there are some bits missing (out of focus). No I didn't put it in the fridge (don't think mum would have let me!) but I did keep it in a jar for a few minutes and after flying around and hitting the sides a few times he was pretty quiet. I took the image at f/16, the fly was on a white piece of paper (so no the surface wasn't edited out) and used a halogen desklamp (not very good) for a diffuse light and a flash for the main grunt. --Fir0002 21:36, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I was about to say the same thing. Do you have an in focus photo of the wings and mouth parts to help identification (though I'm not great at it, I can try)? I don't think it is a blowfly, as they have metalic bodies, I am going towards the Stable fly, though I am sure there are hundreds of possibilities. --liquidGhoul 00:40, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Grrr, check out the very first comment on this nomination. It got completely ignored. For the whole time a potentially wrong picture was and still is in the taxobox of the Housefly article. I'm no biologist, and neither is Fir. That's actually a quite a problem. Being a good Photographer doesn't qualify you for decissions like replacing such an image. Maybe a better way would be putting the image on the talk page and ask for feedback first. Apparently it takes a few days for anyone to notice. On the german wikipedia there is a nice service where you can post pictures and have the species determined by some pretty competent experts--Dschwen 08:26, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm 99% sure Melburnian is correct, it's a Calliphora stygia, common brown blowfly (or eastern goldenhaired blowfly). The Wikipedia blowfly page is a bit misleading as it suggests in one place that blowflies always have metallic bodies (this is not the case, at least not in Australia, as Melburnian's links demonstrate). It doesn't appear to be anything like any of the other suggestions. These things are common as muck in country Victoria where this was taken, and are a regular pest in houses, far more common than the 'common' housefly. --jjron 14:02, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yup, fully agree with jjron, and thanks to all the people that helped out on the ID. And thanks Dschwen - but personally I'd rather forgo the interesting pix and not have the bushfires here! --Fir0002 09:40, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Until this is cleared up I commented out the pic on both pages it was used. It is a pretty good picture, but with a potentially wrong caption it does more harm than good in an encyclopedia. I can only urge contributors to have species double checked before replacing images in articles. Anyway, this shouldn't affect the nomination too much (we might want to suspend it though). After this matter is cleared up we can insert the pic into the appropriate article.--Dschwen 19:13, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support-Fascinating Picture of the most irritating creature on the face of this Wonderful World Booksworm Talk to me! 18:32, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Nice photographic work and the usual excellent service from Wikipedia's resident taxonomists. --YFB ¿ 23:54, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I have re-uploaded the image under a new file name, placed it in a new article and changed the caption and image description information based on de:User:Doc Taxon's identification obtained by Dschwen.--Melburnian 02:45, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: Nice clear encylopaedic image that has now been identified. A second view from above showing the dark blue patch on the abdomen would be useful in the future.--Melburnian 06:17, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Now I can wholeheartedly Support. --Dschwen 13:15, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Incredible picture, technically flawless, and great encyclopedic value. Sharkface217 19:32, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support now it's apparently correctly identified, although I wouldn't mind if Fir0002 could confirm that it had the 'dark blue patch' of Calliphora augur (perhaps he took some other photos that show this) and that the nominated pic and this one were in fact different flies as has been identified. --jjron 03:23, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree jjron, for us fly non-experts it would be good to have a visually distinct cross-reference. If Fir happens to have more pictures from above like this this it would be good to see them even if they're not FP material. The "blue" patch of Calliphora augur seems to be quite subtle - I'm yet to find a photograph that shows the colour distinctly. For the record, here's the discussion regarding ID at the german-language wikipedia. It does appear to me that Image:Fly focus bracket.jpg has a bit more "golden fuzz" along its underparts than the fly in the other two photos--Melburnian 05:45, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Sorry but I didn't think to take any top down shots - all of them are side on or face on. However I can confirm that this fly and Image:Fly focus bracket.jpg were two different flies so they could have been different species (althogh they looked pretty similar to me). I can't gaurentee they had a dark blue patch from memory but it is possible --Fir0002 10:06, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Anecdotal comment. I live in the same part of Victoria as Fir0002, and did a bit of check when I went home from work today. I found eight of these flies (I told you they were common), as best I could identify five of them were C. stygia, three of them C. augur. Although they were dead specimens (some of them long dead which could have affected the colouring), even with the specimens right in front of me it wasn't that easy to identify them in all cases, although it does indicate that C. augur is more common around here than I thought, and I'm a bit more comfortable with the identifications. (BTW Melburnian, I think the CSIRO site shows the difference pretty well, C. augur and C. stygia - remember on an insect the abdomen is simply the back section of the body, it doesn't specifically refer to the underneath.) --jjron 12:25, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • My focus on the underparts ("golden fuzz") was to differentiate the individuals in Fir0002's set of 3 photos rather than the species (although it may be a species differentiation as well), but Fir0002 has confirmed image:Fly_focus_bracket.jpg is a different individual now anyway. I came across the CSIRO illustration when I put together the little article as a home for the candidate picture, the illustration shows the “blue patch” on top clearly, but it doesn’t seem to come across so strongly in photographs of the real thing and, going on jjron's observations, the “blue” colouration isn’t even really that obvious when you look at the actual beast. I certainly have learnt a lot about blowflies in the last few days!--Melburnian 01:50, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
            • You're totally right, as is so often the case the obvious differences in type specimens or descriptions are not always so obvious in reality. The real problem was that the dark blue on C. augur can be so dark as to be heading towards black, and the brown on C. stygia can do the same, at least on my dead and dusty specimens. On some the colouring was pretty obvious, but not on others. Before this I always thought they were all the same species, so I have learnt something. BTW, given that the CSIRO pics are copyright free, do you think they're worth putting into the wikipedia article(s)? --jjron 02:30, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Very good quality, and now identified. We need one like that of the housefly. NauticaShades 14:18, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per above. howcheng {chat} 19:06, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Major depth of field problems. --Dgies 22:56, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support -Ravedave (Adopt a State) 04:23, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Detailed and encyclopedic 212.10.217.122 22:43, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted Image:Calliphora augur whitebackground.jpg Raven4x4x 05:13, 17 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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