New Macro Setup – Help Me Out
- This topic has 23 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated Aug 26, 2008 at 2:37 am by
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Neal hope you dont mind the image, they’re solely for illustrative purposes. Grats on the new lens, macro shootng can be alot of fun.
Getting an all black background can also be acheived by setting exposure values that would normally have the image underexposed. The upside is that the BG need not be black or uniformally black nor all that far away. As flash is on ettl will emit enough to illuminate the target and thats it. As the settings are for an undexposed image (say 2 stops) the rest of the image is black as it would without any flash.
If I recall correctly the bg here is close to a sky blue and about 2 or 3 feet behin the fly.Its a #20 or #22 uncropped at close to the MFD if not at.
LMAO!! Neal, it was the stool samples that made me think of the 105 LOL!! I see that you are having a great time with the new lights, pictures quality is looking very good. Your fun has just begun though as a whole new world opens up once those strobes leave their little nest on the lens 🙂
Along with what both John and Zach wrote, you are going to LOVE those SB200’s, with the SU800, as it is with the SU800 that you control the exposure values of the SB200’s and getting them off camera opens a whole new world to you. As you may have noticed, you can set them all independently to A, B, or C and have 4 channels to choose from, they all have to be on the same channel though. This gives you more control over not just the light but more control over the shadows.
I too decided to post and example and I know that you can shoot this exact same shot better than I did. There are many things wrong in this shot and to help you out, I will point some of them out. One SB200 (Set to A group) on a point and shoot tripod set camera right and just above the forward fly. Second SB200 (Set to “B” group) on the provided stand and placed under the rear fly, pointed up and stepped down. Due to this, I have a terrible shadow crossing over the tail of the back fly. Way too much light on the driftwood, under the primary fly.
If I were shooting it for any other purpose again, I would put a home made girded snoot on the “A” SB200, to help create a gradient flow on the driftwood and raise “B” SB200 and perhaps a small snoot on it as well. Set the SB600 to group “C” at 105mm, step it way down and point it towards the candle stick (would probably need a snoot or flag as well).
I know that your shot would turn out better as I purposely did everything wrong on this shot for a reason. I give little to no credence to the camera critics as I know the levels that they go to for finding fault in equipment, then others take a piece of this and then the internet is full of bad information. According to all of the information available, this image should be terrible (Way beyond the fact that I set the lights wrong). It should be full of terrible noise and extremely soft all over, if one was to believe the reviews on this equipment.
I shot this a long time ago and promise you that there is absolutely no post processing, not even white balance of this photograph. I used the 105VR at f 29, suppose to be terribly soft from what is written about this lens. Shot it with a D200 at 1/25 (yes very slow but it was done so that I could set everything to completely sabotage this shot with the terrible ISO rumors) EV value -2.33 and the ISO set at 1600, according to everything written, the black background should be full of noise and the rest of the image should be extremely soft.
Like Zack and John were talking about though, if you are strobing from the side and have little light splash, the background does not have to be far behind. Direct flash directly down range, move the backdrop back. In this image I clamped a solid about 2’ behind the subjects and the amount of light on the candle shaft illustrates how little splash the SB200’s give off, that and also the fact that the candle light is not spiked out.
Seriously though Neal, you can shoot this much better than I did and the image will look much better from your equipment. Just don’t use the same camera settings that I did LOL
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