A few macro shots - feedback welcome.
Discussion
Evening Folks,
I went for a walk in a meadow this morning with the family, and attracted plenty of odd looks crawling around with my nose 6 inches above the ground!
These are the first time I've managed to get hand held macro shots that weren't a complete blurry disaster, so they're already very satisfying, but any tips on how to improve would be very welcome.
All shots were taken with a Canon 450D, Canon f/2.8 100mm Macro lens and a Canon MR-14EX ring flash.
All were shot in manual mode at ISO 100, and with the exception of the first which was 1/100th sec at f/10, all were 1/125th sec at f/16 with the flash on ETTL.
One particular question is whether I can do anything about the flash reflection? The green fly was taken with the flash set to -1 2/3 stops, but there's still reflections on the body of the fly. Is this just something I'll just have to get used to?
If anyone wants to check other settings to provide tips, the full exif data for them is on my Flickr page
ETA - Added the spider I'd forgotten.
I went for a walk in a meadow this morning with the family, and attracted plenty of odd looks crawling around with my nose 6 inches above the ground!
These are the first time I've managed to get hand held macro shots that weren't a complete blurry disaster, so they're already very satisfying, but any tips on how to improve would be very welcome.
All shots were taken with a Canon 450D, Canon f/2.8 100mm Macro lens and a Canon MR-14EX ring flash.
All were shot in manual mode at ISO 100, and with the exception of the first which was 1/100th sec at f/10, all were 1/125th sec at f/16 with the flash on ETTL.
One particular question is whether I can do anything about the flash reflection? The green fly was taken with the flash set to -1 2/3 stops, but there's still reflections on the body of the fly. Is this just something I'll just have to get used to?
If anyone wants to check other settings to provide tips, the full exif data for them is on my Flickr page
ETA - Added the spider I'd forgotten.
Edited by Kermit power on Sunday 14th June 19:57
Nice photos. I may have mentioned this to you before but I use an ice cream tub lined with foil and covered with tissue as a diffuser. It doesn't completely eliminate reflections but helps. That's on a normal flashgun though so I don't know how easy it would be to make something for a ringflash.
SamHH said:
Nice photos. I may have mentioned this to you before but I use an ice cream tub lined with foil and covered with tissue as a diffuser. It doesn't completely eliminate reflections but helps. That's on a normal flashgun though so I don't know how easy it would be to make something for a ringflash.
The ring flash already has diffusers built in. I'm not sure that you actually could do any more in the way of diffusing it?I don't know if diffuser is the technically correct word but the purpose of the the ice cream tub is the same as a softbox on a studio strobe. It's not the fact that the flash is firing through the tissue (or whatever other material you use), it's that it turns the flash into a larger light source making the light less harsh. The diffusion on your ringflash doesn't make the light source any bigger.
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