Lighting & Studio Why flash is a must in almost all macro scenarios...

[Chavezshutter]

Of all the factors that a photographer can control, the ability to control lighting would by far be one of the most important. In other style of photography like landscape the photographer will hunt for that just perfect golden hour lighting to light up their scene just right, of course they could take a photo in different lighting conditions but that is a compromise most times, from my own experience even a rather boring landscape transforms into something special under the right lighting conditions.

In Macro the ability to add light becomes even more important for the simple reason that in order to capture most subjects at 1:1 magnification or more we must narrow our f/stop in order to have enough depth of field. Stepping down from what is normally a sufficient f/stop for other style of photography (eg. f/4) to what is required for 1:1 macro photography (eg. f/11 +) means that you have to get that light back somehow for a proper exposure. Raising your ISO is the worst solution and last option, so what is left? increase shutterspeed? maybe if you have a static scene and a tripod. This leaves only flash or another external light source as solution and as you will see there are much more reasons to choose one of these, as they do much more than simply add light...

A flash freezes action; if you have ever been to some party, club, etc where they were using a strobe light you may have noticed that the strobe freezes people for a short period after the strobe fires, it makes it look as if everyone freezes mid dance move. Flash does the same thing. I have an active little dog and when I wanted to learn about flashes one of the first things i tried was to see if i could a get a shot of her in action - My shutterspeed dropped from over 1500/sec with no flash to 200/sec to completely freeze her mid air, side effect of this was the ability to sharply drop my ISO and therefore lower the noise in the photo.

A flash creates sharpness; I do a lot of photography where I need to turn off lights in order to achieve the result I am looking for, one of the most frustrating things about this is when I KNOW I have hit sharp focus only to get a photo that did not look sharp at all, lights back on, take another shot and its sharp, what is going on here?!?!
Cameras, just like our eyes do not see objects but rather the light reflected from them, more light means more definition. More light also means you get to trade in noise and allow you to use the narrower fstop that are needed in macro.

Flashes also opens your choices to off camera flash later on which is in itself a very handy technique to learn for all types of photography. A good LED torch or light panel works well too but be careful of the blueish hue that LED can give, altering your white balance to compensate for this can change the tones in your photos in ways you may want to avoid. I use 1/2 CTO (Colour Temperature Orange) Gel sheet 205 on my LEDs to avoid white balance issues in post.

There are times when a flash isn't needed like if you have a backlit image and you want a silhouette, if your not shooting macro at close proximity you dont need flash as you dont need to narrow down your fstop in order to get the DOF required to capture your subject or maybe your doing UV photography like me where any external light will dim the fluorescence. But overall these scenarios are in the minority of most macro scenarios.

I would love to hear about some of your opinions about this as I believe its one of the most re-occuring themes I see on macroderie, which is the reason I decided to write this post in the first place.

I will finish by telling you what my experience with and without a flash has been - My camera brand is well known for its low light capabilities and the last thing I wanted was to spend more money on another piece of equipment, not to mention the time to learn how to use it, extra weight, etc, etc. Why would I need it with a camera that performs so well in low light? Fast forward to nowdays where I still beat myself up for not having entered into flash photography earlier, wasted time. To date no other single purchase (not even top brand lenses) has had a greater positive impact on my macro photography, I cant recommend it enough to anyone who wants to raise the bar in their macro journey.

 

[Jack]

Morning Chavezshutter . This is definitely a very interesting subject to discuss in macro photography. Yes, i do agree with everything you said above regarding light which is more important in macro photography. However, i always take in consideration other factors, example the subject (how small it is, what it is, example moving or static object), the environment (where i will do the shoot, how sunny it is) and what i want to achieve.

If will shoot indoors then yes, having a flash its mandatory to get that sharo photo and have the entire subject in focus. Increasing the ISO never been an option for me, as you can't see the noise on your photo when watching it on your camera, buy when you do export images to your PC, that's the time when you see all unwanted details, like noise, blur spots.

Personally i don't use my flash enough, which is a bit of shame. Thats because ny 7d m2 has built in flash already, and i can use it sometimes. But when shooting static subjects, that is when i do use flash.

Ps: K kzurro might like this topic.

 

[Sergey Prokofiev]

Good day!
The main subjects of shooting for me are mushrooms and mixomycetes. I don't use flash at all as it doesn't give natural shadows, so I use an alternative - a tripod. Small objects like mixomycetes and micro mushrooms I set to f16, ISO and can be anything at least 50 or 64. Sometimes I use diode lights, but for certain effects.

 

[kzurro]

I admit that I've been shooting without a flash for a long, long time. the main reason was that I wasn't able to achieve a look in my photos that I liked. I tried different modifiers, but didn't like the results either, so most of my pics were shot with natural light and high ISOs.
a couple of years ago, I finally found a light modifier that I liked. its main problem is that it's a bit bigger than I'd like and it often scares my subjects.
now my goal is to tweak my modifier to eliminate or reduce unwanted specular highlights. as the modifier is big, those specular highlights are less obvious, but they're still there, so I'm going to try a new technique that I've found that seems promising: cross-polarization.

 

[Sergey Prokofiev]

I admit that I've been shooting without a flash for a long, long time. the main reason was that I wasn't able to achieve a look in my photos that I liked. I tried different modifiers, but didn't like the results either, so most of my pics were shot with natural light and high ISOs.
a couple of years ago, I finally found a light modifier that I liked. its main problem is that it's a bit bigger than I'd like and it often scares my subjects.
now my goal is to tweak my modifier to eliminate or reduce unwanted specular highlights. as the modifier is big, those specular highlights are less obvious, but they're still there, so I'm going to try a new technique that I've found that seems promising: cross-polarization.

Can you show this device? Or give a link to it?

 

[Chavezshutter]

Good day!
The main subjects of shooting for me are mushrooms and mixomycetes. I don't use flash at all as it doesn't give natural shadows, so I use an alternative - a tripod. Small objects like mixomycetes and micro mushrooms I set to f16, ISO and can be anything at least 50 or 64. Sometimes I use diode lights, but for certain effects.

Yes a tripod is one way to avoid flash and works well in a static scene, another way I didn't mention is focus stacking. I like tripods, exchanging lower noise for longer shutter speeds is very powerful and so handy in many photography styles

But I am curious about what you mean about flash not giving natural shadows? Any source of light will of course change the shadow in a scene and there are many variable within using a flash such as power, angle, diffusion, on camera or off camera flash, direct light or bounced light, etc. I am still learning how to use mine to get the most out of it, its quite a skill to learn how to shape and control light same as using a camera.

If natural light is what you prefer and want as a final look and you are using a tripod to soak up that light and keep your ISO contained then thats a good setup i think . How do you shoot when things like wind come into play or moving things like insects?

Thank you very much for your comments

 

[Chavezshutter]

I admit that I've been shooting without a flash for a long, long time. the main reason was that I wasn't able to achieve a look in my photos that I liked. I tried different modifiers, but didn't like the results either, so most of my pics were shot with natural light and high ISOs.
a couple of years ago, I finally found a light modifier that I liked. its main problem is that it's a bit bigger than I'd like and it often scares my subjects.
now my goal is to tweak my modifier to eliminate or reduce unwanted specular highlights. as the modifier is big, those specular highlights are less obvious, but they're still there, so I'm going to try a new technique that I've found that seems promising: cross-polarization.

I didnt go into the details of flash use as there are so many factors but yes i agree 100% - You need diffusion for flash in macro without a doubt. I used a pringles modifier but upgraded to something a little better since, I am happy with it but I know I can get better results so I will be looking at an upgrade again in the future.

Interesting you mention cross polarization, I tried it out a couple of weeks ago on some shots i posted here;

Want critique - My first auto rail stacked image

Hi, I received my macro rail and since I had a setup ready to go from my previously posted polarized crystal I decided to try it out. It was also the first time using Helicon Focus stacking software. More details about this shoot can be found here...

macroderie.com

and here;

Want critique - Crystals and cross polarization at x4 magnification

Hello, After watching a video from my favourite macro photographer - Don Komarechka, i decided to try one his crazy experiments, it involves creating a thin layer of crystals with some chemicals on a glass surface and then using cross polarization (2 CPL filters) to bring out the colours of the...

macroderie.com

I was using it to bring out colours from the crystals and had heard it was used in other macro but didn't research it further, would love to see what results you get.

Thank you for your comments, much appreciated

 

[kzurro]

I admit that I've been shooting without a flash for a long, long time. the main reason was that I wasn't able to achieve a look in my photos that I liked. I tried different modifiers, but didn't like the results either, so most of my pics were shot with natural light and high ISOs.
a couple of years ago, I finally found a light modifier that I liked. its main problem is that it's a bit bigger than I'd like and it often scares my subjects.
now my goal is to tweak my modifier to eliminate or reduce unwanted specular highlights. as the modifier is big, those specular highlights are less obvious, but they're still there, so I'm going to try a new technique that I've found that seems promising: cross-polarization.

one of these.

PS: it's strange, my previous answer has disappeared.

 

[kzurro]

I admit that I've been shooting without a flash for a long, long time. the main reason was that I wasn't able to achieve a look in my photos that I liked. I tried different modifiers, but didn't like the results either, so most of my pics were shot with natural light and high ISOs.
a couple of years ago, I finally found a light modifier that I liked. its main problem is that it's a bit bigger than I'd like and it often scares my subjects.
now my goal is to tweak my modifier to eliminate or reduce unwanted specular highlights. as the modifier is big, those specular highlights are less obvious, but they're still there, so I'm going to try a new technique that I've found that seems promising: cross-polarization.

I had seen the term "cross polarization" previously, but always related to photos like the ones you posted. as I don't do that type of photography I never paid much attention to the technique. yesterday I saw a video about it and realized it could be helpful.

 

[Jack]

I admit that I've been shooting without a flash for a long, long time. the main reason was that I wasn't able to achieve a look in my photos that I liked. I tried different modifiers, but didn't like the results either, so most of my pics were shot with natural light and high ISOs.
a couple of years ago, I finally found a light modifier that I liked. its main problem is that it's a bit bigger than I'd like and it often scares my subjects.
now my goal is to tweak my modifier to eliminate or reduce unwanted specular highlights. as the modifier is big, those specular highlights are less obvious, but they're still there, so I'm going to try a new technique that I've found that seems promising: cross-polarization.

They don’t disappear , you can load previous comments . There is a button .