This week I finally broke down and got some flash brackets, extension tubes, and a 1.4x teleconverter. Flash brackets are arms that attach to the camera and you put a flash at the end of it to get the light further away from the lens. I got two of the macro combos from here. They're really nice. With my flash brackets I can use my 180mm macro lens to get shots of butterflies and dragonflies and things like that, but still have the style of sculptured lighting that I get with my extreme macro gear. I took this shot of a dragonfly before I got my brackets. It's an okay shot, but the lighting is a little flat for my tastes. I took this shot of a treefrog today with my flash brackets. It's not quite how I wanted it, but it's pretty good. I've made an observation concerning the shots I've taken so far with this. Most of them suck ass 
There is so much flexibility with this set up that the learning curve is huge. Still, I've worked with flash quite a bit before so it shouldn't take too long before it's second nature. I just need to use it a lot more.
I got the 1.4x teleconverter to use with my 180mm macro lens. The converter effectively makes it into a 250mm lens. With the converter I can either be 1.4x further away from the subject than without, or be the same distance away and get 1.4x more magnification. 1.4x converters are pretty easy to design, so there is hardly any image degradation at all. All you really lose is a stop of light, but with my flash setup that's nothing.
Canon's 180mm f/3.5 L macro lens is one of the sharpest lenses ever made by anybody. Just for giggles I took a crop of the frog's eye, 300x259 pixels, and blew it up 500%, to 1500x1259. You can see it here. Keep in mind the whole frog was less than an inch long. I didn't do anything else to it, I just cropped and blew it up. Some very large prints can be made from photos taken with this lens.
I can see a monopod in my furture. I just wasn't prepared for how big and heavy this setup would be. I need to get some shots of this beast (Pics now below). It's pushing ten pounds all together, and the flash arms span about two feet. It's unreal.
The converter will also fit my MP-E 65mm macro lens, and I also got a set of extension tubes. Go here to see what a fully extended MP-E 65mm lens with 68mm of additional extension plus a 1.4x converter can do. Yes that's the date on a penny, no it hasn't been cropped, that's the full frame reduced in size. Depth of field is just a fraction of a millimeter at this magnification. I haven't done the math, but it's got to be pushing 12:1 magnification with that setup. Now all I need to do is find something that small to shoot. You know I will
Here's some just random photos that I took recently:
It's a dayflower. I think I posted a couple shots of these before, but this is my favorite. I saw a shot of one of these in a magazine, that I really liked. The shot was taken at some goofy angle that didn't really work, but the lighting was really nice. Looking at the shadows and reflections I didn't think it would be too hard to duplicate, but about 150 subsequent shots and what would have amounted to a small fortune in film would prove me wrong. I still didn't quite ever get it, but I think I topped it. What I ended up doing is using the MP-E 65mm macro at slightly greater than 1:1, along with the MT-24EX macro twin flash, and another flash unit behind the flower slaved to the twin flash for backlighting. It was a tricky shot to pull off, but I think I did okay. Dayflowers only last for a few hours each morning. Their generic name is Commelina, after three Dutch brothers named Commelin. The two large blue petals are for two of the brothers who went on to be great botanists, but the smaller white petal is for the other brother who died in obscurity. These are a naturalized introduction from Asia.
A hoverfly eats pollen from a mullein flower. Mullein is also called lamb's ear because of the soft hairy leaves. It has been used for a variety of medicinal purposes since the Roman days. This is not a native plant, but has naturalized throughout large portions of North America. This is a biennial plant, it sprouts from seed and makes a lot of growth the first year, and grows some more and then blooms the second year. After the adult plant has produced seeds, it dies.
A silver-spotted skipper looks for nectar in an Asclepias flower. This plant is called butterfly weed, and it attracts a great variety of insects to it's blooms.
A yellow crab spider chilling out in the morning dew. It's well camoflagued on a yellow jewelweed blossom, and has little to fear from anything. My flash fired through some leaves and made some pretty neat lighting effects. I like it.
Well, I guess that's it for now. All of these shots were taken with an EOS D60. If you want to know anything further about a particular shot of subject I'll try to answer.
Let me know what you think.
There is so much flexibility with this set up that the learning curve is huge. Still, I've worked with flash quite a bit before so it shouldn't take too long before it's second nature. I just need to use it a lot more.I got the 1.4x teleconverter to use with my 180mm macro lens. The converter effectively makes it into a 250mm lens. With the converter I can either be 1.4x further away from the subject than without, or be the same distance away and get 1.4x more magnification. 1.4x converters are pretty easy to design, so there is hardly any image degradation at all. All you really lose is a stop of light, but with my flash setup that's nothing.
Canon's 180mm f/3.5 L macro lens is one of the sharpest lenses ever made by anybody. Just for giggles I took a crop of the frog's eye, 300x259 pixels, and blew it up 500%, to 1500x1259. You can see it here. Keep in mind the whole frog was less than an inch long. I didn't do anything else to it, I just cropped and blew it up. Some very large prints can be made from photos taken with this lens.
I can see a monopod in my furture. I just wasn't prepared for how big and heavy this setup would be. I need to get some shots of this beast (Pics now below). It's pushing ten pounds all together, and the flash arms span about two feet. It's unreal.
The converter will also fit my MP-E 65mm macro lens, and I also got a set of extension tubes. Go here to see what a fully extended MP-E 65mm lens with 68mm of additional extension plus a 1.4x converter can do. Yes that's the date on a penny, no it hasn't been cropped, that's the full frame reduced in size. Depth of field is just a fraction of a millimeter at this magnification. I haven't done the math, but it's got to be pushing 12:1 magnification with that setup. Now all I need to do is find something that small to shoot. You know I will
Here's some just random photos that I took recently:
It's a dayflower. I think I posted a couple shots of these before, but this is my favorite. I saw a shot of one of these in a magazine, that I really liked. The shot was taken at some goofy angle that didn't really work, but the lighting was really nice. Looking at the shadows and reflections I didn't think it would be too hard to duplicate, but about 150 subsequent shots and what would have amounted to a small fortune in film would prove me wrong. I still didn't quite ever get it, but I think I topped it. What I ended up doing is using the MP-E 65mm macro at slightly greater than 1:1, along with the MT-24EX macro twin flash, and another flash unit behind the flower slaved to the twin flash for backlighting. It was a tricky shot to pull off, but I think I did okay. Dayflowers only last for a few hours each morning. Their generic name is Commelina, after three Dutch brothers named Commelin. The two large blue petals are for two of the brothers who went on to be great botanists, but the smaller white petal is for the other brother who died in obscurity. These are a naturalized introduction from Asia.
A hoverfly eats pollen from a mullein flower. Mullein is also called lamb's ear because of the soft hairy leaves. It has been used for a variety of medicinal purposes since the Roman days. This is not a native plant, but has naturalized throughout large portions of North America. This is a biennial plant, it sprouts from seed and makes a lot of growth the first year, and grows some more and then blooms the second year. After the adult plant has produced seeds, it dies.
A silver-spotted skipper looks for nectar in an Asclepias flower. This plant is called butterfly weed, and it attracts a great variety of insects to it's blooms.
A yellow crab spider chilling out in the morning dew. It's well camoflagued on a yellow jewelweed blossom, and has little to fear from anything. My flash fired through some leaves and made some pretty neat lighting effects. I like it.
Well, I guess that's it for now. All of these shots were taken with an EOS D60. If you want to know anything further about a particular shot of subject I'll try to answer.
Let me know what you think.
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