How I shoot MACRO - Patient to wait

love to do night macro but some of the insect may not active or sleeping in the night and it is good to shoot them while sleeping as in daylight you may not possible to shoot it .. e.g. bee, the bee use to flying around non-stop and not easy to have a capture of it in the day light but at night it will sleeping as


- it seldom move, or we can move it any location/direction to capture a beautiful sleeping style

but I getting bore after a while looking at this beautiful bee sleeping .. so I decide to mark the location and go back in the early morning (just before the bee wake up) , what I going todo
- wake up early (~6-630am)
- go back to the mark location
- use tripod to aiming or pre-focus to the bee
- wait ................................. it may wake up 1-1.5hr later :D so patient is important here
- the moment it wake up, it will stay still for ~5-30s depend on luck
- do not touch it to make it wake up this will make it flew off within 2-5s after we touch it

then with all the efforts above ...





or recently

How I Shoot MACRO - Cheaper version of Wimberley Twin Head Bracket

I was impress with my previous testing Jul 2010 as show below

Canon MP-E65 + Canon MT-e4 + Wimberley Macro twin bracket









as mentioned previously , the setup were
i. little bulky
ii. difficult to control the position as need to adjust the screws for different magnification
iii. costly (do I mentioned this ?)

but I really need the flash to be backward little bit to have better control of the light (better angle and make bigger light source)... so I am looking at alternative for pass 1month... finally I found a similar accessories to have similar setup as above but

i. 1/10 of the owimberley cost
ii. and better and easier adjustment of angle (without need to losse and tight the scews)

a twin flash clamps ...

so I have similar setup









I may not have time to test this setup this week... preparing to go another jungle for coming weekend. But will definitely share results of this twin flashes setup ASAP to you all ..

Review - Results of 2010 - MACRO light test plan 1

not much things found today but lucky got similar object while I use old light setup ( puffer - pop-up flash diffuser put in front of mt-24 flash head)

let's see the light reflection on the damselfly

1. old shot with puffer diffusers
7:1 shot - hot spot found on eye with the mt flash head reflection


should be very close to ~5:1 - think this one I had did some PP on it's eye reflection portion using method clone reflective body share previously


2. new plastic cup diffuser which share here

result - no clone reflective , no dodge and burn
- curve increase contrast
- noise ninja
- stacked 3 shots into 1


think the plastic cup diffuser method did the good job. but as it is little too bulky, big element just in front of my len, so it is not so convenient on shy bug .. or even no so shy type may flew off due to the plastic cup extend out .... am not sure will I continue use this but then definitely a good MACRO lighting setup for mt24.

How I shoot MACRO - MT24 with Difuser 2010plan01

was planning this and test with few similar option before but never got any good result. but then decide to share this even I feel this still having problem with my setup

why am I building a bigger diffuser
1. larger light size
2. softer light
3. my long MACRO len (SIGMA150) need better and larger diffuser (I need something work for both of my MP-E65 & SIGMA150)

so my testing make up of

1. pop up flash diffuser




2. styro foam bowl& Kitchen towel paper


3. final setup





sample output .. (sorry trying to get back the original setup but the beetle flew off)





(minimum PP done on above pictures)

based on last picture show above (my large diffuser is from right from my len and the small one is on left) overall the light diffuser better than my previous one (I personal feel)
but it create bad shadow after 3:1 which mean I lost 4-5:1 while using my MPE , think this could be over size of my big diffuser ... will try to make it smaller next round

How I shoot MACRO - angle is important

I had share this to most of my MACRO gang, "angle" to shoot the bugs is very important. Angle need to be choose to control
1. better DOF
2. better BG
3. show beauty of the object

and in general I had discuss @previous post How I shoot MACRO - Composition, angle ...

I can't provide too many samples but will keep on to post relevant sample as I got relevant sample pictures ...

as for last week , I got a chance to see a pair of weevil mating on the tree trunk and I know this will be good for this so I decide to make few shots to show the different effect on BG while using different angle

below is a picture show the situation


and as for the sample of common 90 degree to the object and we are easier to get max DOF but the BG will look like


a dark/black BG will be produce as full flash use, so we could try to make leave behind the object as sample (different object but still a beetle on tree but with brown leaf behind as BG - hand make :D )


but then while we shift out angle a bit higher to make the tree body as BG


- this will be better in term of overall picture but then it is not easy to get both Weevil in focus due to the DOF limit. so even we move to upper but we still need to control the angle where both weevil eye can be in focus


some add-on on the weevil, this weevil is small one and I shoot it with coin as comparison before as below



and again we really should thanks MACRO photography to allow us to see something where we normally can't view through human eye

a big magnification of same type of Weevil

special write for my gang .... Philip Wee

a gang of mine, asking for poison (wny am I using mt24) ... so while our last week outing in a reserve jungle we tried to shoot the same beetle (normally I stop shooting the long horned beetle... I just have too many of them) with same gears (canon 5dm2, mpe65...) except the light different.. I am using mt24 setup as below


and he is using my old setup as below


I am sharing this to him with minimum of PP and waiting for his post too to have compare ...

a portrait mode


a landscape mode


just hope he will post his ASAP .. and I will update his picture here



but let share my capture

he is replying this fast with picture

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4019/4321311593_883c642c1a_o.jpg