Flash macro shooting skills

For ordinary consumers, digital photography is often unable to achieve ideal results because of the lack of equipment needed for professional photography, especially when shooting close-ups. As long as you explore and study with your heart, even if you use some common auxiliary equipment in your family, you can make the flash provide ideal lighting effect and get better picture quality. Using two electronic flashlights and umbrellas can reduce the shadow phenomenon that may occur when shooting macro scenes. How to set up these equipments reasonably and make the shooting work complete smoothly is also a crucial issue.

Here, we will introduce an economical way to provide the best lighting for macro shooting. In the process of shooting, besides Olympus E- 10 digital camera and FL-40 flash, we also used Stroboframe, rope fixing device, LumiQuest Promax pocket bouncer, some white plastic foam boards and several black Velcro (double-sided). The effect of setting the background with plastic foam board is ideal. At present, there are also products specially used for background in the market, and there are many colors for users to choose from. The product size is between 14x22 inches and 30x40 inches. In this shooting, a plastic plate with the size of 14x 17 inch was used. The specific specifications are as follows: this kind of foam plastic board is quite convenient to use and can be cut into the required shape or size with a knife or other cutting tools. The picture above shows the layout of a plastic plate as a reflective background, with an oval hole dug in the middle.

1. The back of the plastic board is usually cut during operation;

2. Draw a parallel line with the length of 14 inch 3 inches from the top;

3. Draw another line from the center of this line to the center of the plastic board;

4. Make two marks on the vertically drawn line, one mark is 6- 1/4 inches from the top, and the second mark is 10- 1/4 inches from the top;

5. Using the lens cover of E- 10 digital camera as a mold, draw two circles on the plastic board, the upper tangent of the first circle must be at the first mark, and the lower tangent of the next circle must coincide with the second mark;

6. The center lines of the two circles must coincide with the vertical line of the center line of the plastic plate;

7. Connect the left and right sides of two circles with two lines;

8. hollow out the middle part, as shown above. Then draw a gap from the line drawn at the top, remember never to cut it, it will be used as a hinge.

After the above work is completed, a reflector specially used for macro shooting lighting is made. If you want to make the operation more convenient, you can fix the digital camera on a tripod and then set up a plastic reflector, as shown below. When moving the mirror, you can take off the lens cover first, move it in place and then close it. For the convenience of operation, some grooves can be carved on the top of the reflector to fix the fixed cable. If all goes well, the top of the reflector will be combined with Stroboframe, and the reflector will be placed at a 45-degree angle.

The ideal placement angle of the reflector is 45 degrees. If the effect is not ideal, it can be adjusted according to the above description.

Next, we will cut into the real theme: this is the back of the lighting setting of FL-40 macro shooting, and you can see that we use Velcro to firmly fix the reflector and strobe frame together. Now the shadow cover of the lens has become a part of the set. Without the shadow of the lens, the light emitted by FL-40 and pocket jumpers will directly illuminate the lens, which will greatly affect the shooting effect. This is the front of the lighting device, and the lens shadow cover and reflector are perfectly combined. Because the reflector is placed at 45 degrees, there is a certain gap between the lens and the bottom of the cut hole, but it will not have a great impact on shooting. To avoid any problems, you can block this gap with tape.

There may be many readers who are worried that they may not get the corresponding reward for spending so much energy. Don't jump to this conclusion too early. Let's take a look at the effect of the shot image first: you should not feel that the loss is worth the candle, and all doubts should disappear. These two images were taken with this reflector, and only FL-40 flash was used for shooting. When shooting the above picture, we keep the incident point of the illumination light and the mirror axis in the same line, so there is no need to be so careful when operating. When shooting the next image, more "exposure compensation" settings were made.

In order to let people know more clearly the image effect of this lighting device, we also took some images in the ceramic closet. In the process of shooting, we simply open the closet door and then choose to shoot some small objects. From the above picture, we can see that the light reflected from the lower part of the reflector shines on the glass shelf. The above picture shows the setting when shooting the glass fairy, with black plastic foam board on the left and white plastic foam board on the right. For the best effect, you can use plastic plates of different colors. Plastic plates with white edges can soften incident light. In order to put the reflector closer, we put the fairy sculpture on a small bucket, so that the reflector can reflect more light to the sculpture.

This setting can also be very compatible with the MCON35 camera. The only thing to do is to change the type of lens shadow cover, which is very simple to operate.

In the operation of replacing the lens shadow cover, we should pay more attention to checking the shooting effect on the viewfinder to ensure that the reflector will not directly reflect the light onto the lens. The biggest advantage of this setting is that the FL-40 flash can move left and right, and can also be tilted upward at a certain angle, which can produce different lighting effects. When shooting, we suggest that you set the white balance of the camera to 6500 and lock the shutter speed to1125 seconds or faster, because this can effectively avoid the influence of ambient light. Because the flash measures light through the lens, users can choose aperture value and control depth of field. We set the camera to spot metering mode here. Of course, you don't have to stick to this, you can also try to use the center button metering mode. If you are satisfied with the settings but the exposure effect is not very good, you can adjust the exposure compensation value in the main menu. Setting the camera on a tripod can effectively prevent the camera from shaking. After setting up, you can also try to take pictures from different angles or distances. Because the reflector and strobe frame are fixed together, it is very convenient to use a tripod, and the macro fill light flash mode can also take quite good images under outdoor light conditions. When shooting this image, the surrounding light is dark, so the light reflected by the flash and reflector is quite bright, and the effect of the shot image is obvious to all.

When we shot the above picture, we shot it under the condition of low power of the flash, so the flash intensity of the flash is not very large. This image was taken in direct sunlight outside, with high contrast, and the light reflected by the reflector diluted the shadow part of the scene. This kind of reflector has excellent effect and can provide quite good illumination when shooting macro images. However, it is not perfect. When using it, we should foster strengths and avoid weaknesses to achieve the best shooting effect as much as possible. This is an image taken with a MCON35 camera, and all the incident light comes from the FL-40 flash set on Stroboframe.

This kind of lighting setting has low cost and excellent effect, and of course it cannot completely replace the standard studio lighting equipment. The reason why we are here to introduce to you is that it is impossible for consumers to carry standard studio lighting equipment with them at any time, which is quite convenient. As long as conditions permit, it can be made anytime and anywhere, and even high-quality images can be taken without using standard studio lighting equipment. This kind of lighting equipment is also very different from ring lighting equipment, so it can't be generalized. The only similarity between the two is that most of the light shining on the scene is coaxial with the lens line, so it can't provide illumination for the particularly close scene. For example, shooting a scene 2 inches away, the lighting effect is not very good.