Pattern Photography part2

[Will Milne 0]

Hi

 

Thought I would have a go at building a fully portable hand holdable macro flash setup . Mainly to photograph insects for a project.

 

Couple of tests- hand held camera approx 90 % of original capture ie- 10% crop. Mostly worried about highlights and shadows. No natural light involved.

 

 

and

 

 

 

Curious if these look passable?

 

Will

 

 

[Isonychia 0]

Holy bleepin' bleep! "Spectacular" is the word I'd use. Those blew by "passable" at the speed of (strobe) light.

 

Good, even illumination with just a hint of shadow to keep things realistic. Good depth of focus, no blown highlights -- what's not to like? Three cheers for a job well done! :yahoo: :yahoo: :yahoo:

 

If your approach isn't proprietary, would you mind sharing it with the rest of us? Those are the kind of fly photos I'd give my left n*t to be able to make!

 

John

[Peterjay 0]

Nice job Will - I don't think it gets much better than that.

[Ashby 0]

Everything John said lol. Very nice photos. Did you use a tent for these shots? Great looking shot.

 

Ashby

[letumgo 0]

Sharp as a tack!!! I too, hope you will share your set-up. We have the proof it works great. :headbang:

[Guest]

Hi Will, I agree with everyone else. Those shots are nice and clear and not blown out at all.

 

Jim

[Graham 0]

Excellent, I think they both look Great. Did you curve the under-layment up behind the flies, or does it lay flat?

 

Graham

[Mokai 0]

Great work..I think it was a success..

[Wulff 0]

Very nice Will

[Joe Hard 0]

Great looking photos!!!!!

[Will Milne 0]

Lol John

 

Since I could not live with either the guilt or thought of you loosing such an important peice of your anatomy- here is the rig I used.))

 

Ty all for the encouraging words.

 

Ashby- no tent.

 

Graham - I,m not sure what accounts for the apparant falloff in the Epheron Album ( white fly ) image but no the underlay is flat on both images.

 

Here is the rig-

 

 

and

 

 

 

it is basically a hand holdable version of the same lighting rig I had going in this thread -

 

http://www.flytyingforum.com/index.php?showtopic=30342

 

 

In that set of images I used an Umbrella reflected flash with a reflector disc to add the fill.

 

This time I have flash on a bracket and a Lumiquest Big Bounce Diffuser attached. The fill is provided by the card attatched to the flex arm. I made white/gold and siolver cards.

 

It looks heavy but in fact is very light.

 

This image was done at ISO 100/f16/TTL commander/sb600 in TTL slave mode with +0.7 compensation. Hand held.

 

 

The advantage of this rig is that it gives a nice angled light and you can work the mage composition very fast versus having to move/adjust a tripod and light stand/disc reflector.

 

 

Hope all that made sense:)

 

Will

[Isonychia 0]

Perfect! Thanks for the tutorial, Will! That's an ingenious setup. Easy to duplicate, light and compact.

 

I'd love to see some of your insect shots. Sounds like a terrific project.

 

Again, thanks for sharing!

 

All the best,

John

[Graham 0]

That's a great looking set up Will and your pattern photography rocks, big time. Very, very cool.

 

Graham

 

.

[FKROW 0]

Will,

 

Great post, thanks for details.

 

Could you identify the bracket and flex arm, I would like to purchase the same arrangement.

 

Regards,

FK

[Will Milne 0]

Graham -ty- It's been fun playing around with various ways to do this stuff- obviously each approach has it's advantages and disadvantages. So that has been usefull on a personal level to try and sort that out.

 

 

FKROW-

 

That bracket was assembled from bits and peices of lighting accesories- there are a couple of of commercially available ones that would do the same thing, though I have not tried them- still testing the waters here , trying to see if the one I have is versatile enough to do or if a commercial one has advantages that would be usefull.

 

Kirk Macro Flash Bracket-

 

http://www.kirkphoto.com/brackets.html

 

Wimberley Bracket System-

 

http://www.tripodhead.com/products/flash-b...ro-brackets.cfm

 

There are obviously many more out there- but those two seem to be favoured by folks doing macro flash in a big way.

 

The Flex arm is made from from an auto flex mirror tool- I cut off the mirror and handle and epoxied a little clamp onto the end. The mirror tool was about $10.00.

 

Borrowed the idea from here-

 

http://www.tripodhead.com/products/plamp-main.cfm

 

The reflectors are just 1/16 th" plastic with Strathmore Chromolux Mirri ( paper backed shiny mylar I think) contact cemented to the face.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Will