Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Cameras, Lenses and Shooting gear => Topic started by: walter.sk on March 29, 2013, 12:47:03 pm
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I've started shooting flowers at the Bronx Botanical Gardens using my 100mm macro lens and ring flash. Even with the flash ratio between halves of the ring set to 8:1, the flowers come out pretty flat looking. The BBG does not allow tripods or monopods in the hothouses. A friend showed some shots he got using a regular strobe with a homemade bounceer/diffuser, held with his left hand, while he holds his camera with his right hand. He uses a shutter speed of
1/200 or 1/250, and provided the lens is focused properly, the flash duration is short enough for really sharp pictures. More important, he uses the flash to produce nice directional light that brings out the texture in the petals.
My strobe is kind of bulky and awkward to hold in one hand (Canon 550EX) for me, anyway. Does anybody know of a grip that I could attach below the flash, or do I have to homebrew one out of a piece of broomstick and some hardware for mounting the flash and cable?
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A ring flash is supposed to create flat light. That's a primary function of putting it on axis. If you're just using the ratio controls you can handle some specularity problems but the two tubes in the ring light are too close to each other to create much local contrast.
There are many options for mounting the 550/580 series off the camera. RRS (http://reallyrightstuff.com/Items.aspx?code=FlashBrackets&key=cat) is a good place to start.
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Wimberly
http://www.tripodhead.com/products/flash-bracket-macro-brackets.cfm