Western Pondhawk

[Winston]

First attempt at one of these. Lesson learned...need big flash

Click for larger...

Sony DSLR-A700: 1/200s f/5.6 at 100.0mm iso400

[Greg Beetham]

That's pretty good going for f5.6 Winston, I wouldn't have been game to tackle that one with less than f8, f11 would probably have been ideal tho and you might have got that tail as well, still the detail on the wings, thorax and head is excellent, I reckon it's still quite ok.
Greg
ps. Flash is not easy to organize for tele-macro, the inverse law still get's you too a degree, the nearest parts of the subject can end up slightly over with small highlight burnt out areas, and the furtherest parts getting shadows from the closer parts etc. The best way I found was too have someone hold the flash for you at about twice the distance or even more from the subject as the camera is, then it's more of a flood rather than a bright flash, only thing is you have to have it TTL cable connected, wireless won't work from above and behind, I found this sort of by accident one night when photographing frogs with my X700 and the only flash I had with me was a Metz45 so I took it off the bracket and had a friend hold it and aim it for me from above and behind, TTL worked good on the X700, although if there was a deep backgroud behind the subject you had to dial in a 1/2-2/3 stop under exposure, (centre weighted metering), and the results were much better than a flash mounted directly on the camera ever was.

[Dr. Harout]

Nice catch. The wings are beautiful and the flash didn't ruin the shot.
I think I need a longer lens, it's quite hard to shoot with 50mm.

[Birma]

Nice shot Winston. As the Doc has said. the body and wings look great.

I think I need a longer lens, it's quite hard to shoot with 50mm.

So Doc, what are you thinking of going for? Tamron 90 / Sony 100 / older manual lens?

[Greg Beetham]

You could be right Doc, I got the impression it was an ambient light photo and Winston was longing for a big flash too get more light onto the subject for more DOF...and it just didn't really look like a flash photo to me either..but I could be wrong.
Greg

ps. I agree with you about the lens, although you can get a larger magnification with the 50mm macro, you have too get so close to do it, it's more of a specialist application type lens, the 100mm macro makes life a lot easier for general tele macro for sure, even a good zoom lens like the Sigma that Don uses makes life a lot easier to get really good photos of smallish things.

[Winston]

The EXIF in the large image reveals that the built-in flash fired. The pondhawk was in shade so I resorted to a little fill light...not enough to give it that "flash" look I dislike so much but enough to get the shot.

I'm thinking about investing in an HVL-58AM and finding or making some sort of light-weight, large bounce difuser. Anyone have some thoughts on such a scheme?

Thanks all for your comments.

[gio67]

that is one excellent picture winston

[Greg Beetham]

I've been thinking about experimenting with that 'opal' perspex, it provides a very clean white diffused or bounce light, off-cuts of various thickness and size can be got from the local supplier, (it's used too make sign written light boxes), it's easily cut and can be bent into a fixed position with a little heat, one could even probably glue some al-foil on the rear surface of a thicker piece (so, not so much flash battery power is wasted)...the only problem is attaching the reflector/bounce panel to the head of the flash, I've always just used some 2' masking tape for such endeavours in the past and probably will do again.
Greg