Brian Valentine - SmugMug Artist-in-Residence

Lord Vetinari

RogersDA wrote:

I want to know it all

But, I will start with lighting. Are the extreme close-ups with natural light or primarily flash. What would be typical flash settings (power levels) and camera settings (Av, Tv, manual)?

If I can most of my shots are a mix of natural light and flash but leaning heavily on the flash.
My standard camera settings for shooting around 1:1 would be Camera M mode, 1/200th ,ISO200, F11, flash in ETTL +.33 FEC. This tends to give 1 to 2 stops underexposure without the flash. As you go up in magnification the proportion of flash in the shots increases. If the natural light is too bright for this then I drop the ISO down to 100 and/or start shading the subject.
When using flash you need to take into account the background brightness, so for light backgrounds you may need to increase FEC by upto +1 and for dark backgrounds you may need to reduce FEC by upto -1 both from your own standard setting.

For Natural light shots I would be shooting in Av, TV or M mode depending on the situation but tend to put the ISO up to 400 or 800 and say in AV mode try for F8 and keep the shutter speed above 1/100th.

You can use a fill flash technique in Av or Tv modes where you set the EC on the camera to -.66 and then let the flash fill the gap.

For flash shots I use a bracket mounted flash with a homemade diffuser. Info on setups can be found here.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/topic/66514/

Brian V.

RogersDA

Brian, Thanks for the information. I will most certainly have more questions.

Anyway, new toys arrived yesterday. Thought I'd test them out. Images are hand-held (with some stabilizing with a table) and straight out of the camera and uncropped.

MP-E 65 @ 1X


MP-E 65 @ 1X


And, of course, even though I cleaned before use I still have the dirtiest sensor.
MP-E 65 @ 5X

Lord Vetinari

RogersDA wrote:

Brian, Thanks for the information. I will most certainly have more questions.

Anyway, new toys arrived yesterday. Thought I'd test them out. Images are hand-held (with some stabilizing with a table) and straight out of the camera and uncropped.
And, of course, even though I cleaned before use I still have the dirtiest sensor.

Looking good !
Congrats on the new lens, as you have found out nothing shows up sensor dust like an MPE-65 at higher magnifications. One thing that took me a couple of months to work out with this lens is that if you want sharp looking shots at higher magnifications you have to widen the aperture.

ie I use around F11 at 1:1 but am down at F5.6 at 5:1 and pro rata in between.

Brian V.

Andy

bump for new learning series, see post #1

thegridrunner

wow, this is awful...now I have to buy a macro lens.
Long live the Lord

drdane

A "D-Grin" for Lord V
Thank you Skippy and Brian for hosting this Marvelous Macro Forum in the making! :ivarbarb

Here is a smile for our good Lord V:



It's unprocessed (and unsharpened), other than cropping and an unsatisfactory attempt to put the stack together in Helicon Focus. (hand-held-braced with 300D-Rebel and Canon 100mm F2.8 macro at f5.6.)

Looking forward to playing with you all!
Dane

Lord Vetinari

drdane wrote:

Thank you Skippy and Brian for hosting this Marvelous Macro Forum in the making! :ivarbarb

Here is a smile for our good Lord V:



It's unprocessed (and unsharpened), other than cropping and an unsatisfactory attempt to put the stack together in Helicon Focus. (hand-held-braced with 300D-Rebel and Canon 100mm F2.8 macro at f5.6.)

Looking forward to playing with you all!
Dane

Thanks Dane for the DF
it's skippy and everyone else that hosts the forum - I just answer questions sometimes

Brian V.

nzmacro

From the very first time I saw this guy's work at Dpreview, I knew where he would go. You could tell not only from his wonderful work and shots, but also from his curiosity for wanting to understand more. Just amazing Bri . You have fast become one of my favourite macro shooters...........and its a small list BTW

All the best as always Brian. Just kep them them coming.

Danny.

Lord Vetinari

nzmacro wrote:

From the very first time I saw this guy's work at Dpreview, I knew where he would go. You could tell not only from his wonderful work and shots, but also from his curiosity for wanting to understand more. Just amazing Bri . You have fast become one of my favourite macro shooters...........and its a small list BTW

All the best as always Brian. Just kep them them coming.

Danny.

Thanks Danny for the compliment
Your not bad yourself
Brian V.

b8264d

Wow! I've seen your work all over the place, this must be a thrill and shock at the same time. It's high time you recieved the accolades that you deserve.

Keep up the good work.

Jeff

(AKA JRSlater at DSLReports and on flickr.)

Lord Vetinari

b8264d wrote:

Wow! I've seen your work all over the place, this must be a thrill and shock at the same time. It's high time you recieved the accolades that you deserve.

Keep up the good work.

Jeff

(AKA JRSlater at DSLReports and on flickr.)

Thanks Jeff
Brian V.

leightonoc

sale of prints?
Hi, I like your work but why don't you sell prints online?

Thanks,
Leighton

Lord Vetinari

leightonoc wrote:

Hi, I like your work but why don't you sell prints online?

Thanks,
Leighton

I do sell prints at http://www.lordv.smugmug.com/ (print gallery)
and http://www.photoboxgallery.com/lordv

Brian V.

ladykassie

Thank you!
*** off to catch some dragonflies ***