Care to share?

[Tim Schulz]

Hi all,

I’m thinking of buying this:

so that I can try to do this:

(linked from Matt Jones’ earlier post http://www.itinerantangler.com/cgi-bin/board/YaBB.pl?num=1261265726)

or this:

(from Jay Morrison http://www.flyfishermanforum.com/2009/12/fly-photography-ties-by-gretchen-beatty.html)

I don’t expect to create something as impressive as these guys have done, but I’d like to move in that direction.  

Would anyone care to share advice on good choices for the surface to set the fly on for photographs like these?

[anonymous]

Tim- the lightbox would get you going in the right direction , adding removable/different color- gold/silver reflective panels inside will also be handy. I would be hugely wary of bulbs as a light source and the reflector type heads. You will find the reflector heads pretty redundant and there tends to be a lot of “drift” in intensity and color output of bulbs making what you want to do a chore.

A couple of speedlight type flashes will give you tons

[Matt Jones]

Tim,

I agree with Will.

www.mattjonesphotography.com

[Tim Schulz]

Matt and Will:

Thanks for the advice.  Always good to hear the same thing more than once.  

Matt:  Posting a set up shot would be great.  

The light tent I posted is a little over $300 with the lights at B&H.  

I don’t have anything invested in lighting yet, but  I’m about to pull the trigger on this for a start:

A friend advised that I start with this 580EX II and add a couple less expensive lights.  

I’m not too concerned about the budget, but I don’t want to get carried away.  Just an amateur trying to have some fun.

Thanks for the help.

[Zach Matthews]

Matt,

I too am interested in seeing the setup you are using for those fly shots. I have been researching off camera flash and thinking about shooting some of the surf flies that we are using on the left coast. Thanks in advance.

[David Anderson]

The light-tent and constant lights will be fairly easy to get started with and will work well enough with flies, but flash is IMHO better again.
Also, speedlights (I hate mine :D) are not as good as proper flash units, though in saying that, I don’t have a lot of knowledge of the cheap studio flash gear around these days – maybe things have changed ?

This I do know, you can do great fly shots with one studio flash head and a small square softbox and a reflector.

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.

[Author]

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