My wierd macro setup.....

DavefromCt · Nov 28, 2014

Well the wierd part is the lighting. I used to work at a fiber optics place and they were tossing a fiber ring light so I scavenged it and glued the fibers so that they align with my old nex-7 camera's flash when it pops up. The rest of the setup is a reversed 35mm Nokton lens. Here are a couple of pictures of it. It looks very crude and I did it fast but it really does take fantastic shots I think.

Overread · Nov 28, 2014

Interesting and neat way to get the light from the pop-up to the subject. People oft dislike the pop-up, but if you can channel the light it can do rather well for macro and I've seen a few people using snoots and similar designs to get the light forward.

The only downside I can see is that the light you will get is going to be very even in a perfect ring. Now that is great if you want that sort of lighting; however its not a very natural form of light. You might find it worth experimenting to see if its possible to lower the amount of light going out of key parts of the ring-light - so that you can use it to create a shadowing effect.

Another thought is that its giving you a very small, very tight ring of light. small sources of light result in sharper, more harsh lighting and shadows. Again not a problem if you want it, butyou might look to see if there is a way you can increase the size of the light source relative to the subject to help soften the light some.

DavefromCt · Nov 28, 2014

Overread said:
Interesting and neat way to get the light from the pop-up to the subject. People oft dislike the pop-up, but if you can channel the light it can do rather well for macro and I've seen a few people using snoots and similar designs to get the light forward.

The only downside I can see is that the light you will get is going to be very even in a perfect ring. Now that is great if you want that sort of lighting; however its not a very natural form of light. You might find it worth experimenting to see if its possible to lower the amount of light going out of key parts of the ring-light - so that you can use it to create a shadowing effect.

Another thought is that its giving you a very small, very tight ring of light. small sources of light result in sharper, more harsh lighting and shadows. Again not a problem if you want it, butyou might look to see if there is a way you can increase the size of the light source relative to the subject to help soften the light some.

Actually since the lens seems to magnify so much, the light is usually pretty diffused in this case. I've also experimented with placing a tissue between the flash and fibers to diffuse it more. You're right though....this setup isn't perfect for everything but seems to work really well for the stuff I do. I used this setup for the whatsit post of the gears below. Thanks for the input!