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Marvellous Macro - part 7 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

by Mike McNamee Published 01/04/2007

Painting with Light

For magnifications around 4:1 and apertures of f32, even the humble flashgun struggles to provide enough power. For inanimate subjects you can set up in a light tent, dim the room lighting and then use multiple flashes with the shutter locked open on the 'bulb setting'. You can easily bias the lighting-strength around the light tent to add modelling to your image (eg an extra couple of flashes on one side or the other). This is gloriously simple with digital, especially as you can even drive the camera from the computer and see your results within seconds. In film days we used to take whole rolls of film and then process onsite to check we had the shot in the bag before moving onto the next specimen - it seems truly archaic today but that was the way it was!

Nikon SB-R200 Macro Lighting System

This is a system in every sense of the word and we are grateful to member, Dr Paul Atkins who brought it along for us to test out - the carry case (top) contains so many goodies that it saved us many hours of manual reading having an experienced user show us around! Similar offerings and a ring flash are also available from Canon. The Nikon unit is controlled from either a D200 camera built-in flash (which needs the little flap shown above to keep the control flash off the subject) or from the dedicated SU-800, fixed to the builtin hot shoe. The actual flash heads (two provided in the kit) are attached to a ring fixed to the lens and may be assigned to the correct channel and group by a simple dial. You may also include SB-800 and SB-600 guns into the mix, making for even more versatility. You may, if you choose, add extra heads around the holding ring until you have a near complete circle, to make a ring flash. Each head may be fitted with filters, a light-concentrating lens and a diffuser as shown top

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Contact Mike McNamee

1st Published 01/04/2007
last update 09/12/2022 14:56:31

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