Another post that's part image deconstruction and part technique -I think I'm gonna get into the habit of combining the two from now on since it's easier to explain the techniques by breaking down an image as an example. This shots gonna be fun cause it's totally staged.
Yup, you heard me -staged...
It was late in the day, the sun had fallen over the rim of a volcanic crater that I was shooting next to (my favorite abandoned lot) and the Ladybugs were moving slow. So it was pretty easy to approach them but they kept falling onto the ground ever time I grabbed onto the grass stems they were climbing on (had to grab on to keep the scene steady and get the angles that I wanted). I'm not sure if they were having a tough time holding on because of the temperature, or if it's a defense mechanism that kicks in when they feel threatened -drop to the ground to get away from the jerk with the camera. Either way it was pretty frustrating to line up for a shot only to watch the critter fall down and get lost in all the grass.
I really wanted to go home with a few shots since I don't have many images of these critters in my gallery and later on in the year they'll either be too active to photograph or nonexistent. So I held my hand under one of them and caught it when it fell off of its perch and placed it on that daisy (at least that's what I think it is -I'm terrible at identifying the smelly things. To me it's just a backdrop anyway ;) ). I waited for the Ladybug to settle down and when it stopped moving I grabbed onto the stem of the flower with my left hand, used the Left Hand Brace Technique to take the shot, and presto -I've got a studio quality photo even though I'm sitting in an abandoned lot playing with bugs :)
Smoke and mirrors folks, smoke and mirrors...
Monday, April 20, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
Difficulty and Deception
This post is going to be part image deconstruction and part lesson in technique. It's also going to prove that I'd make a terrible magician since I'm giving away my secrets ;)
Let's start out with a shot of a Cuckoo Bee taken at five times life size, F10, and ISO 100:
What if I told you that taking an image like that one, hand held, is easy? Here's the setup: I found this bee on a cool, partly cloudy, day when it was just starting to get active. Since the temps and light were low it was really lethargic -so slow that I was able to cut the plant it was on with a small pair of scissors that I carry in my camera bag and move it to a shaded area on top of a stone wall (to keep it from warming up and flying off). I then clamped the stem of the plant into a small wood clamp that I also carry in my bag and I've got an instant studio. I simply rotated the plant to get the angles that I wanted and rested my arms against the wall to keep everything steady. Granted I had to nail the composition and the focus, but it's really just a matter of practice...
Same critter, but this time at 3x, F13, and ISO 100:
Notice how the background isn't black? That's because I've got the critter as close to the surface of the stone wall as I can and I'm shooting from an angle that allows me to illuminate the wall with the flash -there is no natural light in that scene. Easy to do because I'm in full control of the frame and how the elements in it are arranged. Seriously once you get past the mechanics and understand how things work then an image like that one isn't difficult -it only looks hard due to the magnification.
In contrast here's a shot at life size, F13:, and ISO 100
The background is black because it has to be: I'm shooting in an unkempt flower bed that's less than half a meter wide. The wall behind the bee is dirty and too far away to be illuminated by the flash. I could crank up the ISO or even lower the shutter speed to get some ambient light into the scene (it's almost noon on a cloudless day) but there's one little problem -the bee is hyper active. Even though it doesn't take me long to focus and shoot this little guy gave me all of three frames and he was in constant motion. The only way I could get a sharp image is to take full control of the light and freeze the motion in the scene with the short duration of the flash -to literally use the flash as my shutter. If the flash didn't fire then the only image I'd have is a little bit of that yellow flower (the bee would have been a silhouette).
The same principals hold true for this shot of a honeybee at life size, F13, and ISO 100:
The flower in the background? Well I saw it in the view finder and framed the scene to get it, but the fact that it shows up in the image is luck. It just happened to be close enough to be lit by the flash. Of the four images in this post the last two were the hardest to take since the critters in both of them are in motion.
Footnote: I intentionally left out the shutter speeds that I used for those images because the shutter only effects the amount of ambient light that makes it to the image plane and it has no effect on the flash (as long as you're shooting at or below your camera's flash sync speed). The point that I'm trying to make by not including the shutter speed is that it doesn't matter when shooting at macro magnification and high Fstops -there just isn't enough natural light making its way into the lens to have a major effect on what the camera records. Also by shooting at high Fstops and ISO 100 I'm intentionally trying to eliminate the ambient light in the scene so I can take full control of the light with the flash. So when you look at my images you're really viewing a form of stop motion photography where I'm freezing the motion in the scene with a short duration flash pulse -and now you know the secret to my sharp images... ;)
Let's start out with a shot of a Cuckoo Bee taken at five times life size, F10, and ISO 100:
What if I told you that taking an image like that one, hand held, is easy? Here's the setup: I found this bee on a cool, partly cloudy, day when it was just starting to get active. Since the temps and light were low it was really lethargic -so slow that I was able to cut the plant it was on with a small pair of scissors that I carry in my camera bag and move it to a shaded area on top of a stone wall (to keep it from warming up and flying off). I then clamped the stem of the plant into a small wood clamp that I also carry in my bag and I've got an instant studio. I simply rotated the plant to get the angles that I wanted and rested my arms against the wall to keep everything steady. Granted I had to nail the composition and the focus, but it's really just a matter of practice...
Same critter, but this time at 3x, F13, and ISO 100:
Notice how the background isn't black? That's because I've got the critter as close to the surface of the stone wall as I can and I'm shooting from an angle that allows me to illuminate the wall with the flash -there is no natural light in that scene. Easy to do because I'm in full control of the frame and how the elements in it are arranged. Seriously once you get past the mechanics and understand how things work then an image like that one isn't difficult -it only looks hard due to the magnification.
In contrast here's a shot at life size, F13:, and ISO 100
The background is black because it has to be: I'm shooting in an unkempt flower bed that's less than half a meter wide. The wall behind the bee is dirty and too far away to be illuminated by the flash. I could crank up the ISO or even lower the shutter speed to get some ambient light into the scene (it's almost noon on a cloudless day) but there's one little problem -the bee is hyper active. Even though it doesn't take me long to focus and shoot this little guy gave me all of three frames and he was in constant motion. The only way I could get a sharp image is to take full control of the light and freeze the motion in the scene with the short duration of the flash -to literally use the flash as my shutter. If the flash didn't fire then the only image I'd have is a little bit of that yellow flower (the bee would have been a silhouette).
The same principals hold true for this shot of a honeybee at life size, F13, and ISO 100:
The flower in the background? Well I saw it in the view finder and framed the scene to get it, but the fact that it shows up in the image is luck. It just happened to be close enough to be lit by the flash. Of the four images in this post the last two were the hardest to take since the critters in both of them are in motion.
Footnote: I intentionally left out the shutter speeds that I used for those images because the shutter only effects the amount of ambient light that makes it to the image plane and it has no effect on the flash (as long as you're shooting at or below your camera's flash sync speed). The point that I'm trying to make by not including the shutter speed is that it doesn't matter when shooting at macro magnification and high Fstops -there just isn't enough natural light making its way into the lens to have a major effect on what the camera records. Also by shooting at high Fstops and ISO 100 I'm intentionally trying to eliminate the ambient light in the scene so I can take full control of the light with the flash. So when you look at my images you're really viewing a form of stop motion photography where I'm freezing the motion in the scene with a short duration flash pulse -and now you know the secret to my sharp images... ;)
Thursday, April 16, 2009
How cool is that?!
I was pretty stunned today when I went to Digg.com and saw one of my photos on the first page. How cool is that?! :D
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
MT-24EX User's Guide
I've updated my MT-24EX User's Guide to reflect recent changes in how I'm using and diffusing the MT-24EX.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
The Tao of Macro
I could also use “The Tao of Photography” as a title, since what I’m about to tell you applies to every photographic discipline. But it seems that there are more people hung up on technique in macro than in any other form of photography, and I shoot macro more than anything else. So here goes…
No one cares how you, or I, take our images. The way we shoot is irrelevant.
Really –it doesn’t matter. The average viewer neither knows, nor cares, how a photo was taken. Even if you were standing right next to them explaining everything their eyes would just glaze over, they’d nod their heads and mumble “oh” or “uh huh” –in one ear and out the other…
The only thing that does count is the final image. I hate making a reference to Ansell Adams because way too many people have taken his name in vain to justify their post processing –doing things in Photoshop that they could be doing a lot faster and better with the camera when they press the shutter release. But the idea that the process isn’t important comes from Mr. Adams, and he was right. People don’t come back to look at an image because of what you did or what you used to take the photo, they come back because there’s something about the photo that draws them in. That something is the composition and not the process…
The only time the way becomes important is when you’re trying to learn photography. When I write a tutorial on some aspect of macro I do so as if I’m speaking to another macro photographer, and not someone who knows nothing at all about the discipline. Why waste time writing to the viewer when they don’t care anyway…
So why am I making this post? When I first got into macro three years ago the conventional wisdom was that you had to use a tripod and a focusing rail to shoot macro. If you didn’t then most of the established photographers in the discipline wouldn’t take you seriously. Now it’s generally accepted that a lot of macro work can be done without a lot of gear –kind of hard to argue with the +2,000 images in my Flickr gallery and I’m just one photographer of many who shoots hand held.
Today there is still a lot of emphasis being placed on absolute image sharpness, with people claiming that you have to use small Fstops and focus stacking to get sharp images. I’m hoping that it won’t take another three years for the misconceptions about sharpness to die. If you view your photos at 100% pixels you’re going to see some softness in every photo –not just macro. But since people don’t print 100% crops, or save them to their desktop as wallpaper, evaluating a photo at 100% pixels is pointless. You could take the sharpest image ever, but if the subject is centered in the frame then it’s just one more poorly composed photo –no better than the average vacation point and shoot snapshot...
Moose Peterson once talked about the “8 second clock” –that once a person turns a page in a magazine a timer starts and there has to be something about a photo that will hold the viewer’s attention in those eight seconds. In my opinion the “Wow factor” of seeing a subject at high magnification lasts about 3 seconds no matter how sharp the image is. If you want to keep someone looking at your photos, and coming back to see them again, then the composition has to good otherwise the clock runs out and the viewer moves on…
Am I telling you not to use a tripod, or a focusing rail, or not to focus stack your images? Absolutely not! If you need to use any tool to produce the images that you want to take then so be it! But don’t get it into your head that everyone else must do the same things that you are doing. Or that the only way to get a good photo is to use a certain tool or technique. Don’t get hung up on the way an image was taken –the composition of the final image is infinitely more important…
One final word: I only use a camera, a macro lens, and a flash. I keep the gear count low because I want to let the subject dictate how I shoot it –to not lock myself into a fixed, rigid style of shooting. So the way that I shoot a subject changes depending on the conditions. If I were to fixate on a particular piece of gear or technique then I’d limit what I could photograph or when I could photograph it. Currently the only thing that stops me from shooting is rain –and if I really wanted to I could find a way around it. Don’t hold your breath waiting for my “critters wet and wild” series though…
The way that I shoot is a personal choice based on what I want to do with my photography. Is it the best way to shoot macro? Yes, but only when I’m the one holding the camera –my personal Tao of Macro. Find yours…
No one cares how you, or I, take our images. The way we shoot is irrelevant.
Really –it doesn’t matter. The average viewer neither knows, nor cares, how a photo was taken. Even if you were standing right next to them explaining everything their eyes would just glaze over, they’d nod their heads and mumble “oh” or “uh huh” –in one ear and out the other…
The only thing that does count is the final image. I hate making a reference to Ansell Adams because way too many people have taken his name in vain to justify their post processing –doing things in Photoshop that they could be doing a lot faster and better with the camera when they press the shutter release. But the idea that the process isn’t important comes from Mr. Adams, and he was right. People don’t come back to look at an image because of what you did or what you used to take the photo, they come back because there’s something about the photo that draws them in. That something is the composition and not the process…
The only time the way becomes important is when you’re trying to learn photography. When I write a tutorial on some aspect of macro I do so as if I’m speaking to another macro photographer, and not someone who knows nothing at all about the discipline. Why waste time writing to the viewer when they don’t care anyway…
So why am I making this post? When I first got into macro three years ago the conventional wisdom was that you had to use a tripod and a focusing rail to shoot macro. If you didn’t then most of the established photographers in the discipline wouldn’t take you seriously. Now it’s generally accepted that a lot of macro work can be done without a lot of gear –kind of hard to argue with the +2,000 images in my Flickr gallery and I’m just one photographer of many who shoots hand held.
Today there is still a lot of emphasis being placed on absolute image sharpness, with people claiming that you have to use small Fstops and focus stacking to get sharp images. I’m hoping that it won’t take another three years for the misconceptions about sharpness to die. If you view your photos at 100% pixels you’re going to see some softness in every photo –not just macro. But since people don’t print 100% crops, or save them to their desktop as wallpaper, evaluating a photo at 100% pixels is pointless. You could take the sharpest image ever, but if the subject is centered in the frame then it’s just one more poorly composed photo –no better than the average vacation point and shoot snapshot...
Moose Peterson once talked about the “8 second clock” –that once a person turns a page in a magazine a timer starts and there has to be something about a photo that will hold the viewer’s attention in those eight seconds. In my opinion the “Wow factor” of seeing a subject at high magnification lasts about 3 seconds no matter how sharp the image is. If you want to keep someone looking at your photos, and coming back to see them again, then the composition has to good otherwise the clock runs out and the viewer moves on…
Am I telling you not to use a tripod, or a focusing rail, or not to focus stack your images? Absolutely not! If you need to use any tool to produce the images that you want to take then so be it! But don’t get it into your head that everyone else must do the same things that you are doing. Or that the only way to get a good photo is to use a certain tool or technique. Don’t get hung up on the way an image was taken –the composition of the final image is infinitely more important…
One final word: I only use a camera, a macro lens, and a flash. I keep the gear count low because I want to let the subject dictate how I shoot it –to not lock myself into a fixed, rigid style of shooting. So the way that I shoot a subject changes depending on the conditions. If I were to fixate on a particular piece of gear or technique then I’d limit what I could photograph or when I could photograph it. Currently the only thing that stops me from shooting is rain –and if I really wanted to I could find a way around it. Don’t hold your breath waiting for my “critters wet and wild” series though…
The way that I shoot is a personal choice based on what I want to do with my photography. Is it the best way to shoot macro? Yes, but only when I’m the one holding the camera –my personal Tao of Macro. Find yours…
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Macro Techniques and Lighting
There is an excellent discussion going on over at the Juza Nature Forum about macro techniques and lighting. If you're interested in how some of us shoot macro and how we light the small world then hit that link and have a read...
Sunpak Quantaray XLF-50
I have an EF-S 60mm that I use for day trips when I don't want to carry an MPE-65mm, an MT-24EX, and spare batteries. But I wanted something better than the flash that's built into my 40D so I picked up a Sunpak Quantary XLF-50 flash. It uses 2 AA batteries and you get about 280 full power pulses out of it with a set of NiMH cells. The hot shoe rolls up into the body of the flash for storage and it sounded like a nice small flash for my day trip bag.
A few days ago I mounted it onto a Kaiser adjustable flash shoe via an off camera cord and connected it to the flash mount that comes with the MT-24EX and stuck it on the end of my MPE-65mm just to see how it would perform. I took some test shots at F11 and ISO 100 all the way out to 3x and the recycle time with a fresh pair of charged batteries was instantaneous. I haven't built any kind of diffuser for it, I just used the flip down diffusion panel that comes with the flash that I don't like (too opaque so I'm sure it's changing the temperature of the light) but the light didn't look too bad! Here's a shot at 1x, F11, and ISO 100:
Here's a similar shot with the MT-24EX:
I made some very minor changes to those images in post, but I didn't change the white balance at all. With a better diffuser I'm sure that the quality of light that's coming out of that little flash will be even better.
The really cool part about the XLF-50, other than it coming in Canon and Nikon versions (E-TTL II, and i-TTL), is the weight -only 7 ounces without batteries. It's so light even with 2 AAs that you could Gaffers tape it to the end of a lens provided you have an off camera cord. The guide number is only 66 but because it's so small and light weight it's easy to get it close to what you are shooting. The sticker shock is $99 USD + the cost of an off camera cord.
Footnote: In some markets the flash is called the Sunpak RD2000.
I've been playing around with the flash today and I've run into an irregularity that has me scratching my head: With the EF-S60mm on my 40D and the Sunpak flash mounted directly to the camera's hot shoe I can get a good exposure at F11, 1/250, and ISO 100 -cool. If I drop the Fstop down to F8, or increase the ISO to 200, I get a black frame. Either of those changes should decrease the amount of light that I need for a good exposure by a full stop and it should be easier for the flash to give me a proper exposure. Turning the flash off and then back on seems to clear the problem. I'll add more to this later as I do some more experimenting. The odd thing is that I didn't run into any issues with the flash connected to an off camera cord when I was testing it with the MPE-65mm...
Update: I connected the flash to an off camera cord and I get the same problem. Turning the flash off and then back on clears it and it starts working properly.
A few days ago I mounted it onto a Kaiser adjustable flash shoe via an off camera cord and connected it to the flash mount that comes with the MT-24EX and stuck it on the end of my MPE-65mm just to see how it would perform. I took some test shots at F11 and ISO 100 all the way out to 3x and the recycle time with a fresh pair of charged batteries was instantaneous. I haven't built any kind of diffuser for it, I just used the flip down diffusion panel that comes with the flash that I don't like (too opaque so I'm sure it's changing the temperature of the light) but the light didn't look too bad! Here's a shot at 1x, F11, and ISO 100:
Here's a similar shot with the MT-24EX:
I made some very minor changes to those images in post, but I didn't change the white balance at all. With a better diffuser I'm sure that the quality of light that's coming out of that little flash will be even better.
The really cool part about the XLF-50, other than it coming in Canon and Nikon versions (E-TTL II, and i-TTL), is the weight -only 7 ounces without batteries. It's so light even with 2 AAs that you could Gaffers tape it to the end of a lens provided you have an off camera cord. The guide number is only 66 but because it's so small and light weight it's easy to get it close to what you are shooting. The sticker shock is $99 USD + the cost of an off camera cord.
Footnote: In some markets the flash is called the Sunpak RD2000.
I've been playing around with the flash today and I've run into an irregularity that has me scratching my head: With the EF-S60mm on my 40D and the Sunpak flash mounted directly to the camera's hot shoe I can get a good exposure at F11, 1/250, and ISO 100 -cool. If I drop the Fstop down to F8, or increase the ISO to 200, I get a black frame. Either of those changes should decrease the amount of light that I need for a good exposure by a full stop and it should be easier for the flash to give me a proper exposure. Turning the flash off and then back on seems to clear the problem. I'll add more to this later as I do some more experimenting. The odd thing is that I didn't run into any issues with the flash connected to an off camera cord when I was testing it with the MPE-65mm...
Update: I connected the flash to an off camera cord and I get the same problem. Turning the flash off and then back on clears it and it starts working properly.
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