First macro this year

[lesno1]

https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/fo...attach/jpg.gif

[billtils]

Nice and sharp Les but the inevitiable hot spots from it's shinky surface.

[Wavelength]

Those reflections are very harsh

[Geoff F]

Reflections causing 'hot spots' are very difficult to avoid in ladybirds and many other shiny insects.

Was flash used? Whether to use flash is always debatable and there are good arguments for and against. I usually add a little bit of fill flash as my default setting but adjust all settings to give the best all round option, which includes some flash output compensation.

Bright sunlight can also cause similar problems and even when shooting under diffused light you normally get some issues such as a shadow area of the photographer.

A bit of clone work is frequently required with my ladybird photos.

[xpatUSA]

Reflections causing 'hot spots' are very difficult to avoid in ladybirds and many other shiny insects.

Was flash used? Whether to use flash is always debatable and there are good arguments for and against. I usually add a little bit of fill flash as my default setting but adjust all settings to give the best all round option, which includes some flash output compensation.

Bright sunlight can also cause similar problems and even when shooting under diffused light you normally get some issues such as a shadow area of the photographer.

A bit of clone work is frequently required with my ladybird photos.

+1, Geoff!

For my watch work and table-top stuff I always use diffusers in addition to the ones built into my LED floodlights. The diffusers are home-made from 90gm tracing paper and can be curved around a subject. Have never used flash for that kind of work.

I'd kill 'em and bring them inside ...

[DanK]

I agree with Geoff: reflections are very hard to avoid in the case of bugs with shiny carapaces. However, they can be minimized.

To minimize them, the flash should be highly diffused, ideally with a large diffuser, and held very close to the front of the lens. The reason for the latter two is that you want the light source to appear large relative to the subject. The farther away it is, the smaller the effective light source.

If you search for macro flash diffusers, you will find all sorts of designs, many home-made. I've used quite a number. The diffusing material can be a diffusing lens (some flashes have one), paper towel, sheets of diffusing plastic marketed for photographers, baking parchment paper, or other things. What matters most is that you use a lot of it. I never use fewer than three layers.

Size matters. For a while I was using a StoFen diffuser that I covered with foil around the sides and two layers of paper towel in front. It diffused well, but it was just too small. I switched from that to a home-made "coke can diffuser" (google it), and the larger size made a difference. I now often use a small softbox, with an extra layer of cloth inside and the flash's diffuser place over the flash lens. That works about as well as the coke can diffuser and is a lot less messy to use.

The final piece of the puzzle is a bracket that holds the flash where it needs to be. I have two. One I cobbled together myself from a straight bracket and two mini-ballheads. The other is a Wimberley bracket made for this purpose. both are quite awkward to use, for different reasons.

It sounds like a pain in the neck, and it is. However, there is no substitute. If you use flash without these steps, you will get big reflections.

I'll paste a photo of one of these rigs: the Wimberley bracket with the coke-can diffuser. You'll see that you need an off-camera flash cable because the flash is not mounted on the camera. The lens is a 100mm macro but looks longer because it has a 36mm extension tube attached. One reason this is a pain is that if you change the length of the extension much, you have to reposition the flash.

[xpatUSA]

For my watch work and table-top stuff I always use diffusers in addition to the ones built into my LED floodlights. The diffusers are home-made from 90gm tracing paper and can be curved around a subject.

Nowhere near as fancy as Dan's flash stuff but here's my rig for what it's worth:



Kodak card at back acts as a diffused reflector.

[DanK]

Exactly the same principles as in my setup--just a lot harder to take with you when you are chasing bugs

[lesno1]

It was a quick shot i had to go inside and grab the camera change the lens no flash it was a bright day

[Geoff F]

Sometimes on a harsh sunlight day I manage to use my body to create a bit of slight shadow. That can be a problem with nervous flies but usually works OK for slow moving bugs and beetles etc.

[DanK]

It was a quick shot i had to go inside and grab the camera change the lens no flash it was a bright day

A small diffuser helps with bright sunlight, although it often requires operating the camera with one hand.

[billtils]

Some interesting and creative gear on display here!

The discussion takes us back to one of the oft mentioned issues in live macro work (that is, outside in whatever conditions Mother Nature throws at you, for example the bright sunlight Les encountered here) - to flash or not to flash?

Geoff's use of the body to create some shade is worth bearing in mind, as is bounce light from an off-camera gun or use of a ring flash on low power.

I sometimes feel the best answer is be prepared to live with the ones that don't work and keep trying - one of these days ....

[DanK]

Geoff's use of the body to create some shade is worth bearing in mind, as is bounce light from an off-camera gun or use of a ring flash on low power.

That wouldn't be my advice. First, there is often nothing good to bounce off, and when there is something nearby to bounce off, it's rarely neutral, so bouncing can introduce a color cast. Second, if you want to use flash to lessen the negative effects of bright sunlight, wouldn't it be better to make the (highly diffused) flash high- rather than low-power? The lower the power of the flash, the more the ambient light will be registered. Or am I thinking about this wrong?

[DanK]

Indeed. See post #11, which is less of a change than shading.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[billtils]

..., there is often nothing good to bounce off, and when there is something nearby to bounce off, it's rarely neutral, so bouncing can introduce a color cast. Second, if you want to use flash to lessen the negative effects of bright sunlight, wouldn't it be better to make the (highly diffused) flash high- rather than low-power? The lower the power of the flash, the more the ambient light will be registered. Or am I thinking about this wrong?

Fair comment on the "nothing good to bounce off" Dan. However I know someone who carries cards in his macro kit to create simplified backgrounds so it's maybe not so far-fetched. Oh, wait - his subkect matter is flowers and fungi .

As far as the flash goes I suspect high or low could be situational - personal experience (and therefore highly subjective) has been that low power fill flash works better than higher power - the latter just replaces sunlight hot spots with ones from the flash.

[DanK]

carring a card and using bounce for static objects is a great idea. (I don't think that I have the coordination to do that with bugs.) I haven't done it, but I think I'll try it.

Re flash: the key, I think, is diffusion. What I have found is that if the flash is sufficiently diffused and close enough the the subject, I end up with smaller hot spots than I get from open sunlight. But this is using TTL flash. When you use low-power flash, are you using manual flash to force the flash only to fill? I haven't tried that either in bug photography. I'll have to wait some time to give it a shot, as it's snowing now.