Lighting question

[anonymous]

Been playing a little trying to get at some of what I am seeing in the bugs I have trying to photograph.

I have been a little frustrated with my

[David Anderson]

Wouldn’t you have to have more light coming through the wings from behind to get the subtle color ?

I would try a top light with a white bounce that comes a little from behind and front fill with silver..

I’m guessing here – I shoot people.. :-[ 🙂

www.dsaphoto.com

A picture is thousand words that takes less than a second while a thousand words is a picture that takes a month.

[John Bennett]

You definately want backlight for the tranlucency Will. If I wasnt hitting a brick wall getting flies this season, I had planned to buy a silver reflector just for that.

As for bringing out more colour.
The black BG is a function of an underexposed image, relative to the ambient light available and then the flash compensating fo teh subject.
Worded another way, with no flash it would be a black image.

I kow just how tough it is to get get enough light shooting this stuff but I would hazard a guess you need more exposure/less flash to bring out more of the colours. If you can try getting the exposure to less than 2 stops underexposed pre flash and leave the flash to compensate for the rest.

hope you dont mind the photo add but its the difference between.
this

and

The black bg can be striking but for saturation you’ll likely want more light hitting the sensor.

[anonymous]

David – I see your logic there – I’ll give that a whirl.

John-

[John Bennett]

Not at all…meaning being morning dense and all 🙂

I shoot anywhere between f22 and F29 for mayflies and similiar sized subjects. So yeah allowing more light to hit the snesor…in short a longer exposure can introuduce its own set of problems. The two biggest being noise if you need to bump ISO too high, or motion blur if the SSs arent high enough.

Like I said Im learning how hard it is to get the right amount of light as well. But Ive always ( more accutrately “usually”) worked with the simple premise that the longer the exposure the more saturated an image will be flash/or no.

Can you lower your SS a bit without introducing too much risk of motion blur? Or raise your ISO a bit any combo of?

[Author]

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