Macro Photography – Photo’s for Build Logs (Part 1)

[Jack12477]

That's a pretty sharp close-up

[Matrim]

That was an interesting test so I thought I could see how well I could 'macro' a penny as well. I don't think my camera/setup is up to some of the above as my closest loses too much sharpness around the edges, here the southern half of the penny was too unfocused (you can see the northern and eastern edges are losing a bit of sharpness as well)

 

 

so I had to go further out to get the entire coin in focus

 

 

It looks like I can get to around 10cm away and any closer and the lens moans. Saying that I am still playing about with getting the best out of the macro shots so am looking at aperture 'priority' at the moment to try and help focusing on my ship.

 

 

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

This afternoon, I turned a piece of high density plastic adaptor to fit with between my last camera  and  a microsope an tried it fast to see if it worked!

[Dee_Dee]

FWIW, that 'joke' in post #3 is actually a famous quote by Sam Haskins, a British photographer born and raised in South Africa.  He's best known for his contribution to nude photography, in-camera image montage, and his books.  Sam Haskins died at his home in Bowral, Australia in 2009.  

 

A photographer went to a socialite party in New York. As he entered the front door, the host said 'I love your pictures - they're wonderful; you must have a fantastic camera.'   He said nothing until dinner was finished, then: 'That was a wonderful dinner; you must have a terrific stove.' 

- Sam Haskins

[Keith_W]

Apparently there are flash units that fire off simply by being triggered by a camera's built-in flash.  The 'slave' flash occurs within a millisecond or two of the camera's flash (ie later, but while the aperture is still open) and there's no need for any physical contact or cable connection between the camera and the separate flash unit.

So I've just spent £60 on a little flash unit (a Gloxy 828DFE) that's said to be compatible with my X-5.  I'll let you know later if it works!

 

It may or may not work. The way slave flashes work is like this: 

 

1. Shutter button depressed. This locks focus and exposure - i.e. your camera will now take a picture at the aperture and shutter speed selected. 

 

2. Shutter opens. 

 

3. Flash fires. IF you have a flash set to "master", it communicates with other slave flashes telling them to get ready to fire. Some flashes, like the newer Canon RT flash and Pocketwizards, communicates with other flashes using radio transmission. The older Canon flash and Nikon flash talks to other flash units by light pulses (these are so fast that your eye can't see them).

 

4. All flashes fire briefly and illuminate the subject. The camera takes a new reading of the exposure through the lens (i.e. TTL), and tells the flash how long it needs to fire. 

 

5. This new information is passed on to the slave flashes. 

 

6. Master and Slave flashes all fire. 

 

7. Shutter closes. 

 

If your main flash is not able to transmit exposure information to the slave flash, it may not work. After all, the slave flash does not know how much flash to deliver. If so, you might have to set your slave flash to manual mode (rather than TTL mode) and determine flash power manually. In the old days, you would use a light meter. With digital photography, just keep turning down the power and taking more pictures until the photo looks right. 

 

As an aside: there is a very brief delay between the flash firing to take an exposure reading, and the flash actually firing to illuminate the subject. If you are shooting a person, this is enough to make them blink - hence "BEETTL syndrome" - or "Blinking Eye Electronic TTL". The pre-flash causes the main exposure to capture people blinking or half blinking. Doesn't matter if you are shooting a subject that doesn't blink, like a model ship

Edited April 20, 2016 by KeithW

[kurtvd19]

Brian:

Good luck on your surgery.  I am just under 2 weeks since my cataract job - on my only working eye.  Had 20/400 correctable to 20/20 with glasses my entire life.  I could only read the big E on the eye chart.  Day after the surgery I was seeing 20/30 and 1 week after it was 20/25 and they said to expect it to get better.  I used to have excellent close up vision but right now I have trouble with reading let alone modeling.  But they say I can get new glasses in another week and then reading and modeling will be good too.  Using some drug store reading glasses and they are just barely OK, but the computer and my Kindle are OK so I can last another week OK.

 

Just use the flash on manual.  Using a digital camera you can tell if you have a good exposure.  I do all my photography of the models using manual flash.  I have a flash meter but long ago set up where I have my lights and only adjust the aperture depending what the subject is.  As I have the lights set up and they don't move I know the exposure will always be right on.  I only make adjustments when the subject is darker or lighter than normal.  Check you camera's instruction manual on using the manual settings.

 

Your camera's shutter speed is much slower than the flash duration and any slight lag of one flash to the other is well within the open time of the shutter.

 

Kurt

[Keith_W]

That's OK Brian, the reason I posted that was not to befuddle you with photography geek talk. I did that so that you can understand that most camera flashes on non-DSLR's only expect to be working by themselves and might be confused by the presence of another flash. 

 

Flashes adjust light output by changing the duration which the flash fires. The bulb on the flash only ever fires at the same brightness, what changes is how long it is left on.

 

In a flash working in TTL mode, the flash decides how long to remain on (and thus how much light to give) by metering the scene when the shutter is open. In some camera systems, it is quite clever - it knows where your camera has focused on, it knows the focal length of the lens (and therefore it knows the distance between the camera and the subject), and therefore it knows the approximate amount of power to deliver. What it does not know is whether your subject is black (needs more flash) or white (needs less), so that information is gathered in the pre-flash. 

 

Slave flash knows none of these things. Not unless your camera knows that it is there and talks to it. 

 

What I would expect is this:

 

1. When you take your picture, the shutter opens and your camera flash fires to take a reading. 

 

2. Slave flash sees the main flash and fires at whatever power setting it has been set at, or desires (depends on what mode the slave flash is in)

 

3. By this time, the unknown is - whether the main flash has finished taking its reading or not. If it has, then it continues to deliver the amount of flash that it has determined. If it hasn't - then it will deliver much lower power flash because it saw the light from the second flash. 

 

As I pointed out in my earlier post (and as Kurt said), the way around this is to operate the flash in manual mode. It is not difficult in a hotshoe flash, you just slide to switch to Manual. But in a point and shoot, it may not be possible to operate your flash manually, so results may be unpredictable. Using a flash in manual mode is very easy, much easier than building a model ship. But I can see why it would be intimidating for someone who does not know how flash works. 

 

I should also say that many photographers don't like using flash and don't own flash units at all. This is because flash photography gives you a "flashed look" which is unnatural. The other reason is because flash involves a learning curve and takes a bit of effort and experience to get natural looking pictures. Personally, I am a big believer of flash which is why I took the trouble to learn how automatic flash works, so that it is less unpredictable. 

 

But, for someone who is not willing to invest in learning flash, my advice is the same: either get a tripod, or get yourself more lights. Both are far easier to use and involve much less of a learning curve than attempting to use multiple flash units.