Lady Bugs and more....

Stumblebum · February 17, 2014

These are convergent Lady-bugs, about to end their winter hibernation. Everything is from outdoors. As much as I love Macro, I hate the fact I couldn't mellow out the light and got glare everywhere. I did have a diffuser on but it was not good enough and the light was also not directional. Need to work on both, among other things.

I had Canon's 100mm IS Macro-len, 580-EX flash, plastic diffuser on the flash head, and Kenko extension tubes, and used all 3 for most of the shots (12+20+36 mm). The ETTL mode is supposed to help me out a bit by firing less energy, but don't think it kicked in.:pissed Hope there is some value in composition, worth your click. Cheers!

Any and all help/suggestions to help improve are greatly appreciated.:deal

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silvio000 · February 17, 2014

Uau, awesome job. You are doing a great job.
Really like #2

Stumblebum · February 17, 2014

silvio000 wrote: »

Uau, awesome job. You are doing a great job.
Really like #2

Thanks Silvio! Means a lot! Cheers!

Lord Vetinari · February 18, 2014

Lovely series of shots SB.
Noticed you seem to be using rather high ISO values - what was the reason for that ?

Brian V.

Stumblebum · February 18, 2014

Lord Vetinari wrote: »

Lovely series of shots SB.
Noticed you seem to be using rather high ISO values - what was the reason for that ?

Brian V.

Thanks Brian. Couple of reasons for high-ISO.....it is one of the things I have to figure out how to improve though....

1) The high ISO performance on 5D-MIII kind of spoils you as usually noise doesn't jump out so have lost some fear of going higher with ISO....but it is a bad habit.

2) The bugs were milling around in most cases and everything was hand-held and with extension tubes the setup is heavy and had to be on hand and knees on ground for multiple shots which was extremely tiring, and even slight movement was rendering to a blur when I checked, so I had to maintain fastest shutter speed I could manage, but the aperture was in the way.

3) I wanted maximum DOF and had pushed the aperture to max of f-32 (probably another bad habit/idea). At that aperture, ISO was my only choice to push, to maintain shutter speed.

4) Many of the areas were in a canopy with thick Redwood cover so it was literally dark, so even with a flash, needed higher ISO.

5) I haven't figured out the high-speed-sync mode with flash yet (embarrassing) so it was also capping the shutter speed and again ISO is all I was left with based on aperture and shutter speed need.

6) Finally, after numerous try, the exposures that seemed worth processing were something like combination of 150+ shutter speed with flash and cutting down the f-stop by 3 full stop of under-exposure. After tying that up I am guessing I should have just gone to f-16 and reduced ISO more.

So will try f-16 next time with high-speed-sync and see what happens. Thanks for your help! Cheers!

Lord Vetinari · February 18, 2014

SB - think you are making a couple of errors. When shooting in manual with flash you do not try to get the meter to balance - you just put the flash into ETTL mode and it will supply the required light. So for these shots I would have the camera in manual, flash in ETTL and just set 1/200th, F11 to F16 Iso 100 to 400.
You do not need high shutter speed (and certainly not high speed sync) as most of the light comes from the flash and the flash duration acts as the shutter speed (around 1/1000th sec or faster).
Shooting at higher ISO than necessary will tend to give lower contrast shots apart from any noise issues. Shooting at 1:1 or higher mag at apertures smaller than around F16 (eg F32) will tend to reduce sharpness due to diffraction softening.
Hope that helps
Brian v.

Stumblebum · February 18, 2014

Lord Vetinari wrote: »

SB - think you are making a couple of errors. When shooting in manual with flash you do not try to get the meter to balance - you just put the flash into ETTL mode and it will supply the required light. So for these shots I would have the camera in manual, flash in ETTL and just set 1/200th, F11 to F16 Iso 100 to 400.
You do not need high shutter speed (and certainly not high speed sync) as most of the light comes from the flash and the flash duration acts as the shutter speed (around 1/1000th sec or faster).
Shooting at higher ISO than necessary will tend to give lower contrast shots apart from any noise issues. Shooting at 1:1 or higher mag at apertures smaller than around F16 (eg F32) will tend to reduce sharpness due to diffraction softening.
Hope that helps
Brian v.

Hi Brian, can't say it enough, but thanks! This indeed helps a lot. I wanted/needed to hear regarding the best f-stop range and now I know. I won't feel urge to max it out again. Also I didn't know that combination of ISO and aperture could lead to overall softness. Now I know another reason to keep ISO down. Normally that is always my goal to have the lowest ISO, but I mistakenly assumed that for Macro we have no choice but to crank it up.

I was in manual mode and always shoot in it, unless I am going for wild-life where I switch to Av mode.

I *think* I was in E-TTL mode for flash but I have to learn more about how to control it and keep it there.

I have couple of QUESTIONS regarding diffuser and would love to have your feedback:

Does E-TTL mode get affected by diffuser? Does it get thrown off and adjustments need to be made?
Is there any recommendation regarding a diffuser? I have 2, Fotoidix and Soften Omni-bounce, both are cheap, and I am wondering if something else is required to mellow out the light more.

Being at f-16 would certainly help my quest to lower ISO but I really don't know if 500 would be enough, but I have to try and find out.

Thanks!

Lord Vetinari · February 18, 2014

Stumblebum wrote: »

Hi Brian, can't say it enough, but thanks! This indeed helps a lot. I wanted/needed to hear regarding the best f-stop range and now I know. I won't feel urge to max it out again. Also I didn't know that combination of ISO and aperture could lead to overall softness. Now I know another reason to keep ISO down. Normally that is always my goal to have the lowest ISO, but I mistakenly assumed that for Macro we have no choice but to crank it up.

I was in manual mode and always shoot in it, unless I am going for wild-life where I switch to Av mode.

I *think* I was in E-TTL mode for flash but I have to learn more about how to control it and keep it there.

I have couple of QUESTIONS regarding diffuser and would love to have your feedback:

Does E-TTL mode get affected by diffuser? Does it get thrown off and adjustments need to be made?
Is there any recommendation regarding a diffuser? I have 2, Fotoidix and Soften Omni-bounce, both are cheap, and I am wondering if something else is required to mellow out the light more.

Being at f-16 would certainly help my quest to lower ISO but I really don't know if 500 would be enough, but I have to try and find out.

Thanks!

Hi Again,
Still not sure if you get it judging by the last sentence "Being at f-16 would certainly help my quest to lower ISO but I really don't know if 500 would be enough, but I have to try and find out. "
When you are shooting with flash in ETTL mode and the camera in manual, The in camera metering will often show more than -2 stops out. Ignore this- the flash actually pre flashes in ETTL mode- the camera then works out how much flash is required to0 get good exposure and supplies that info to the flash when it goes off properly. So you can literally just set ISO100, F16 1/200th and the flash will supply the required light.

Regards a diffuser- people normally use softbox type diffusers for macro (Lumiquest do some) but the diffuser should not result in the ETTL flash being thrown off. What does throw the flash exposure off is just the main background brightness or lack of it. So for dark backgrounds or no close background you often have to set negative FEC eg -.66 and the reverse of this is shooting bugs say on a white surface where you have to put in aboput + 2.0 FEC (Flash exposure compensation - either do it on the flash or in camera but not both)

Brian V.

Stumblebum · February 18, 2014

Lord Vetinari wrote: »

Hi Again,
Still not sure if you get it judging by the last sentence "Being at f-16 would certainly help my quest to lower ISO but I really don't know if 500 would be enough, but I have to try and find out. "
When you are shooting with flash in ETTL mode and the camera in manual, The in camera metering will often show more than -2 stops out. Ignore this- the flash actually pre flashes in ETTL mode- the camera then works out how much flash is required to0 get good exposure and supplies that info to the flash when it goes off properly. So you can literally just set ISO100, F16 1/200th and the flash will supply the required light.

Regards a diffuser- people normally use softbox type diffusers for macro (Lumiquest do some) but the diffuser should not result in the ETTL flash being thrown off. What does throw the flash exposure off is just the main background brightness or lack of it. So for dark backgrounds or no close background you often have to set negative FEC eg -.66 and the reverse of this is shooting bugs say on a white surface where you have to put in aboput + 2.0 FEC (Flash exposure compensation - either do it on the flash or in camera but not both)

Brian V.

Thanks Brian! Got it! Will try the first setup/settings a try! I did see that I had to put 3 f-stops lower to get proper exposure but I was the one doing that. If I didn't manually lower the f-stop, then what I saw in my viewfinder appeared over exposed. Will try again.

Lord Vetinari · February 19, 2014

Stumblebum wrote: »

Thanks Brian! Got it! Will try the first setup/settings a try! I did see that I had to put 3 f-stops lower to get proper exposure but I was the one doing that. If I didn't manually lower the f-stop, then what I saw in my viewfinder appeared over exposed. Will try again.

When shooting with full flash just totally ignore the exposure meter in the viewfinder- well check it is showing a large under exposure.
Brian v.

Stumblebum · February 19, 2014

Lord Vetinari wrote: »

When shooting with full flash just totally ignore the exposure meter in the viewfinder- well check it is showing a large under exposure.
Brian v.

Thanks Brian! I have not taken any meaningful pictures since this tip, but all the experiments suggest what you said is all I need to do - Manual mode for camera, ETTL mode for Flash, set the aperture to f-16, ISO to 100-400 and shutter speed to 200. The flash seems to be providing the necessary voltage.

I was not ignoring the the exposure metering data previously and was trying to remain close to the optimum value. Now I simply set shutter of 200, irrespective of how far off it was from optimum. It seems to work.

So now I have to use my soap box diffuser, figure out a way to create directional light and go with new settings! Thanks again!

Paul Iddon · February 20, 2014

That's a terrific set - so many little ladies!

Paul.

silvio000 · February 20, 2014

Stumblebum, you just got schooled...and that's a privilege my friend ;-)

Lady Bugs and more....

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