Gotta get me a twin flash unit with diffusers

[JBW]

With better lighting this shot could be spectacular.

[Wavelength]

Waaaw; superb !!!

[JBW]

Waaaw; superb !!!

way too many bright spots.

[DanK]

Good capture, but I agree, harsh lighting. Did you use an on-camera flash?

You clearly would benefit from diffusion, but that doesn't mean buying a twin flash. I don't even own one. If you have a general-purpose flash, you can build a good diffuser for pennies. Mine, which I will post below, required one soda can, a pair of shears strong enough to cut it, lots of gaffers tape, and two or three sheets of baking parchment paper. (There are lots of suitable substitutes for the paper.)

Then you need a bracket and an off-camera flash cable. I built my bracket out of an aluminum straight bracket (I knocked the shoe off with a chisel), which cost me $7, and two mini-ballheads. you can buy mini-ballheads for about $10 each. the blue one in my picture is a novoflex, but you don't need to spend that kind of money. You can buy the cables for $15-$20 on eBay, but a brand name there like godox will cost about $25.



That won't complete get rid of specular highlights when you have a really shiny bug, like bottle fly or this robber or dancer fly, but it does a pretty good job:



And the nice part of this is that you get a general-purpose flash for all other uses.

[rudi]

A good capture indeed with some specular highlights.

A few years back I bought the canon mpe-65 together with the macro twin light MT24EX, second hand as a 'package'.
It is a very fine light, easy to handle, lightweight, easy to position the two lights seperately, and having two lights (set to a different ratio ) is nice.
BUT IMO a difficult lighting system when it comes to diffusion. Which I am still trying to master. It can
'only' be used for macro, and is expensive.
I think, I would not have bought it, iff it wasn't in the 'package'.


I also have a canon 430EX, on a bracket with two balheads, about the same system as Dan. Which is heavier, more bulky than the twin light. BUT the light is easier to diffuse, for me at least. And as Dan already mentioned, it can be used for other purposes as well.
I use most off the time the 430 EX.

[JBW]

that's a lot of gear and weight. Maybe i should just stick to natural light.

[DanK]

that's a lot of gear and weight. Maybe i should just stick to natural light.

Unfortunately, it is a fair amount of weight, and worse, the weight is far forward, which makes balance tougher. I find it somewhat awkward. That's why I end up using a monopod with a tilt head for bugs--I'm not steady enough without it.

[rpcrowe]

Brian,

I was thinking of you when I noticed this dual bracket on eBay for a bit more than $20 U.S. Dollars including shipping. There are many eBay ads for this type of bracket and you might find one cheaper.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dual-arm-Du...4AAOSwZtlaQ1TO

It would work well with a pair of these flashes. I have one of these units that I will sometimes team up with my Canon 270 EX II (of which these seem to be a copy). They have TTL and manual exposure, a bounce and a slave capability for less than $30 U.S. Dollars + free shipping.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Viltrox-JY-...cAAOSwX61ZJ6n5

This diffuser works quite well with the bounce head of the flash.



I often use this type of with my DSLR in conjunction with my 270EX II for quick and dirty shots like adoption photos. The light is pretty decent for that too...

This entire setup would cost right about $80 U.S. Dollars and would be very light weight. The flashes weigh next to nothing and I don't think that the bracket would weigh very much at all.

Here is another bracket for about twenty bucks which would work with these flashes.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Macro-13-Tw...UAAOSw0exaMI65