Honey Bee on Honey Suckle

Restomage · May 11, 2010

Wow great shot! I wish the eye was slightly sharper but other than that its great. What setup did you use?

NateS · May 11, 2010

Restomage said:
Wow great shot! I wish the eye was slightly sharper but other than that its great. What setup did you use?

Thanks. Yeah, it looks like the focus hit more toward the back of his eye, but the eye was still enough in focus for it to be a keeper I think.

My macro setup is always the same: D90, Tamron 180mm f3.5, SB-600 w/ Lumniquest mini-softbox mounted with a custom bracket onto the tripod collar of the lens...and I use a sync cord for the flash now instead of CLS...CLS was too unreliable and inconsistent (and slow).

I'm struggling with lighting a bit though and trying to figure out what's going wrong.

Houghwya · May 13, 2010

I like the detail of the pollen

stone_family3 · May 13, 2010

Very nice, I love all the pollen stuck on his fuzzy head.

Derrel · May 13, 2010

That Tamron 180mm macro has a lovely lens drawing style and a beautiful defocused zone image rendering. I've been looking at your insect macro shots lately,and must say that I am very impressed with how beautifully that lens cuts an image! I agree with the idea of going with a cord connection on the flash...it's pretty hard to mess up with a direct cord connection!! I have a mini-softbox (small, air-filled,approx. 5x7 inch size) that I sometimes use for macro illumination, with an SC remote cord connection to the camera, and I like to have the flash held off to the side about 20-30 degrees to the left or right,and a bit higher than the lens as well, to sort of simulate natural sunlight/skylight and give the subject a bit more shadow weight underneath. But that requires either one-handed shooting or an assistant to aim the flash from up and off to the side down at the subject. It's possible to hand-hold the softbox in your left hand with a small,light macro lens like a Tamron 90mm, but the bigger macro lenses like my Sigma 180/3.5 are awfully heavy for that type of shooting/lighting.

NateS · May 13, 2010

Derrel said:
That Tamron 180mm macro has a lovely lens drawing style and a beautiful defocused zone image rendering. I've been looking at your insect macro shots lately,and must say that I am very impressed with how beautifully that lens cuts an image! I agree with the idea of going with a cord connection on the flash...it's pretty hard to mess up with a direct cord connection!! I have a mini-softbox (small, air-filled,approx. 5x7 inch size) that I sometimes use for macro illumination, with an SC remote cord connection to the camera, and I like to have the flash held off to the side about 20-30 degrees to the left or right,and a bit higher than the lens as well, to sort of simulate natural sunlight/skylight and give the subject a bit more shadow weight underneath. But that requires either one-handed shooting or an assistant to aim the flash from up and off to the side down at the subject. It's possible to hand-hold the softbox in your left hand with a small,light macro lens like a Tamron 90mm, but the bigger macro lenses like my Sigma 180/3.5 are awfully heavy for that type of shooting/lighting.

Thanks. I love the Tamron 180 and agree that it produces some stunning images. I find it easy to handhold with my current setup...maybe you can rig something similar for your Sigma 180 to make it easier to get around.

For the flash, I agree...and I always keep my flash head about 30 degrees to one side (usually to the left) as I too like the off axis direction for the lighting.

One thing that is nice about the Tamron 180 is that you don't HAVE to hold the flash. If you handhold this lens then that leaves the tripod collar open for use. I mount my flash to my tripod collar and can easily turn the collar to change the position of the light. This also lets me free up both hands to steady the camera.

Here's a picture of my setup. Imagine a minisoftbox (3"x5" I believe) and the sync cord and you have my exact current setup. Oh and I usually have the flash on camera left instead of camera right like in the picture.

...and the flash was backward for CLS, but I can now mount it normal....and I never actually use the lens hood (as that cuts down min focus distance by extending out).

The setup above with sync cord and softbox makes this extremely hand-holdable and mobile.