First production run with A7sii

Images of undisturbed subjects in their natural environment. All subject types.

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gardenersassistant
Posts: 190
Joined: Sun May 31, 2009 5:21 am
Location: North Somerset, England

First production run with A7sii

Post by gardenersassistant »

After various testing of options that I've been doing recently, yesterday I decided that I would adopt the Sony A7sii as my primary camera for photographing invertebrates, to be used with a Sigma EF to E adapter, stacked Kenko EF-mount 2 X and 1.4X teleconverters and  an EF-mount Laowa 100mm 2X macro lens, with illumination from a Yongnuo YN24EX twin flash mounted on a base plate with bendy arms.

This setup will let me use from around 1:2 at around 500mm working distance to 5.6:1 with a working distance of around 72mm.

I envisage using this setup in a fairly "point and shoot" mode, with a fixed aperture of f/40 independent of magnification, with the flash heads in fixed positions and using a fixed 1/4 strength flash power that will let me shoot every 1 to 2 seconds for extended periods, with a fixed shutter speed of 1/200 sec. (I have not yet needed to slow the shutter speed to avoid backgrounds that are sufficiently black to worry my eyes.)

The only things I will change will be the magnification/framing and the ISO. (After an adjustment I made to the positioning of the flash heads I find I'm using between ISO 400 and 1600 for almost all shots. Since the noise level of ISO 3200 on full frame is similar to base ISO 100 which I was content to use with my small sensor bridge cameras I am happy using ISO 400 to 1600 on full frame.)

I will use a largely automated post processing workflow with presets in DXO PhotoLab, Adobe Lightroom and Topaz DeNoise AI doing most of the work. Image-specific adjustments, in Lightroom, will for the most part be limited to adjusting Blacks, Whites and (what Lightroom calls) Exposure, occasional graduated filters to balance lighting, cropping, spotting and occasional small-scale cloning (in Photoshop very occasionally when this would be faster than doing it in Lightroom).

Yesterday, having decided that this is where things stood and that the current phase of testing and fine tuning had finished, I went over to the Church grounds opposite our house to simply use the setup rather than testing it. Here are some of the images from the session. (For those who are concerned about such things, the white balance is set from a calibration shot for the diffuser setup I was using. There are some environmental colour casts in the images below. It is a personal preference of mine to leave such environmental casts in place.) The 89 images I kept from the session are in this album at Flickr.

#1
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1903 01 2021_05_27 DSC02853_PLab4 LR 1300h DNAI DNAIc by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#2
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1903 09 2021_05_27 DSC02878_PLab4 LR 1300h DNAI DNAIc by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#3
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1903 16 2021_05_27 DSC02914_PLab4 LR 1300h DNAI DNAIc by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#4
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1903 27 2021_05_27 DSC02989_PLab4 LR 1300h DNAI DNAIc by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#5
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1903 29 2021_05_27 DSC03019_PLab4 LR 1300h DNAI DNAIc by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#6
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1903 46 2021_05_27 DSC03155_PLab4 LR 1300h DNAI DNAIc by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

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1903 53 2021_05_27 DSC03185_PLab4 LR 1300h DNAI DNAIc by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#8
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1903 81 2021_05_27 DSC03298_PLab4 LR 1300h DNAI DNAIc by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
Nick

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Rework and reposts of my images posted in this forum are always welcome, especially if they come with an explanation of what you did and how you did it.

DonaldB
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Location: Queensland

Re: First production run with A7sii

Post by DonaldB »

very nice Nick

MarkSturtevant
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Re: First production run with A7sii

Post by MarkSturtevant »

Superbly done! Very fine craftsmanship here.
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

gardenersassistant
Posts: 190
Joined: Sun May 31, 2009 5:21 am
Location: North Somerset, England

Re: First production run with A7sii

Post by gardenersassistant »

DonaldB wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 3:02 am
very nice Nick
Thanks Don.
Nick

Flickr
Blog
Journey since 2007

Rework and reposts of my images posted in this forum are always welcome, especially if they come with an explanation of what you did and how you did it.

gardenersassistant
Posts: 190
Joined: Sun May 31, 2009 5:21 am
Location: North Somerset, England

Re: First production run with A7sii

Post by gardenersassistant »

MarkSturtevant wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 8:16 am
Superbly done! Very fine craftsmanship here.
Thanks Mark.
Nick

Flickr
Blog
Journey since 2007

Rework and reposts of my images posted in this forum are always welcome, especially if they come with an explanation of what you did and how you did it.

pawelfoto
Posts: 90
Joined: Tue Mar 09, 2021 2:51 pm
Location: Poland

Re: First production run with A7sii

Post by pawelfoto »

I am still envious of your photos. Your DIY diffuser works great - the beetles are beautifully lit in the yellow cup of the flower. I will try to follow your path, because I always missed the depth of field in nature macro photography. I am waiting for it to warm up in Poland and I will try my hand at the field with teleconverters. It's nice that you describe what parameters you use so precisely
==good luck, Pawel

gardenersassistant
Posts: 190
Joined: Sun May 31, 2009 5:21 am
Location: North Somerset, England

Re: First production run with A7sii

Post by gardenersassistant »

pawelfoto wrote:
Sun May 30, 2021 1:57 pm
I am still envious of your photos. Your DIY diffuser works great - the beetles are beautifully lit in the yellow cup of the flower. I will try to follow your path, because I always missed the depth of field in nature macro photography. I am waiting for it to warm up in Poland and I will try my hand at the field with teleconverters. It's nice that you describe what parameters you use so precisely
==good luck, Pawel
Thanks. If you are going to try using very small apertures you will probably need to adjust your post processing because the images will be very soft.

I hope it warms up soon and you can start experimenting with live subjects. Have you done any indoor tests (e.g. with the small print on packaged products) to see what you are going to have to deal with by way of image softness and what post processing might help deal with it? That might be good to explore while you are waiting for the warmer weather to arrive.
Nick

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Blog
Journey since 2007

Rework and reposts of my images posted in this forum are always welcome, especially if they come with an explanation of what you did and how you did it.

pawelfoto
Posts: 90
Joined: Tue Mar 09, 2021 2:51 pm
Location: Poland

Re: First production run with A7sii

Post by pawelfoto »

I opened a new topic about this technique, please check it out and add your opinion
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=43624
== thanks, Paweł

gardenersassistant
Posts: 190
Joined: Sun May 31, 2009 5:21 am
Location: North Somerset, England

Re: First production run with A7sii

Post by gardenersassistant »

pawelfoto wrote:
Thu Jun 03, 2021 3:10 pm
I opened a new topic about this technique, please check it out and add your opinion
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=43624
== thanks, Paweł
OK. Have done.
Nick

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Blog
Journey since 2007

Rework and reposts of my images posted in this forum are always welcome, especially if they come with an explanation of what you did and how you did it.

Dalantech
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Joined: Sun Aug 03, 2008 6:57 am

Re: First production run with A7sii

Post by Dalantech »

Looking good Nick!

My only .02 is to start experimenting with the angle of the flash heads since you're using a twin flash. I have one head mounted at the top of the lens on a Kaiser Adjustable Flash Shoe so I can point it straight down, and the other mounted at 3 O'clock (relative to me) at about a 45 degree angle. It's pretty much the key and fill lighting that portrait photographers use. The benefits are: Better control over the highlights and shadows. Light that partially wraps around the subject at different angles and makes the scene look more 3D. Last, but not least, since the lights are at different angles you'll pick up more texture detail than if they were hitting the subject at the same angle. That last one helps me to offset some of the detail loss due to diffraction with my single frame macro.

gardenersassistant
Posts: 190
Joined: Sun May 31, 2009 5:21 am
Location: North Somerset, England

Re: First production run with A7sii

Post by gardenersassistant »

Dalantech wrote:
Mon Jun 07, 2021 12:29 am
Looking good Nick!

My only .02 is to start experimenting with the angle of the flash heads since you're using a twin flash. I have one head mounted at the top of the lens on a Kaiser Adjustable Flash Shoe so I can point it straight down, and the other mounted at 3 O'clock (relative to me) at about a 45 degree angle. It's pretty much the key and fill lighting that portrait photographers use. The benefits are: Better control over the highlights and shadows. Light that partially wraps around the subject at different angles and makes the scene look more 3D. Last, but not least, since the lights are at different angles you'll pick up more texture detail than if they were hitting the subject at the same angle. That last one helps me to offset some of the detail loss due to diffraction with my single frame macro.
Thanks John.

I'm a bit restricted as to flash head angles. I have them pointing in different directions to as to cover the large range of working distances I'm using (and move between from shot to shot for the same subject while I'm shooting a continuous sequence every one or two seconds). The flash head directions are delicately balanced to cover the whole range and moving them can lose coverage for low or high magnification shots. Also, while the arms do have ball-heads so the heads can be rotated, the arms are very stiff and difficult to manipulate, so moving the heads up/down, left/right, backwards/forwards is not practical out in the field. And because of the way it all fits together, rotating the heads more than a little can also cause problems with the positioning of the outer diffusion layer, for which I've now managed to get a quite large gap between it and the outer layers of the flash head boxes. I'd love to experiment more, but I'm facing interlocking physical limitations.
Nick

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Blog
Journey since 2007

Rework and reposts of my images posted in this forum are always welcome, especially if they come with an explanation of what you did and how you did it.

Dalantech
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Re: First production run with A7sii

Post by Dalantech »

gardenersassistant wrote:
Mon Jun 07, 2021 1:44 am
Dalantech wrote:
Mon Jun 07, 2021 12:29 am
Looking good Nick!

My only .02 is to start experimenting with the angle of the flash heads since you're using a twin flash. I have one head mounted at the top of the lens on a Kaiser Adjustable Flash Shoe so I can point it straight down, and the other mounted at 3 O'clock (relative to me) at about a 45 degree angle. It's pretty much the key and fill lighting that portrait photographers use. The benefits are: Better control over the highlights and shadows. Light that partially wraps around the subject at different angles and makes the scene look more 3D. Last, but not least, since the lights are at different angles you'll pick up more texture detail than if they were hitting the subject at the same angle. That last one helps me to offset some of the detail loss due to diffraction with my single frame macro.
Thanks John.

I'm a bit restricted as to flash head angles. I have them pointing in different directions to as to cover the large range of working distances I'm using (and move between from shot to shot for the same subject while I'm shooting a continuous sequence every one or two seconds). The flash head directions are delicately balanced to cover the whole range and moving them can lose coverage for low or high magnification shots. Also, while the arms do have ball-heads so the heads can be rotated, the arms are very stiff and difficult to manipulate, so moving the heads up/down, left/right, backwards/forwards is not practical out in the field. And because of the way it all fits together, rotating the heads more than a little can also cause problems with the positioning of the outer diffusion layer, for which I've now managed to get a quite large gap between it and the outer layers of the flash head boxes. I'd love to experiment more, but I'm facing interlocking physical limitations.
Ouch. Easier for me I guess cause I'm dealing with very short working distances.

gardenersassistant
Posts: 190
Joined: Sun May 31, 2009 5:21 am
Location: North Somerset, England

Re: First production run with A7sii

Post by gardenersassistant »

Dalantech wrote:
Mon Jun 07, 2021 1:56 am
gardenersassistant wrote:
Mon Jun 07, 2021 1:44 am
Dalantech wrote:
Mon Jun 07, 2021 12:29 am
Looking good Nick!

My only .02 is to start experimenting with the angle of the flash heads since you're using a twin flash. I have one head mounted at the top of the lens on a Kaiser Adjustable Flash Shoe so I can point it straight down, and the other mounted at 3 O'clock (relative to me) at about a 45 degree angle. It's pretty much the key and fill lighting that portrait photographers use. The benefits are: Better control over the highlights and shadows. Light that partially wraps around the subject at different angles and makes the scene look more 3D. Last, but not least, since the lights are at different angles you'll pick up more texture detail than if they were hitting the subject at the same angle. That last one helps me to offset some of the detail loss due to diffraction with my single frame macro.
Thanks John.

I'm a bit restricted as to flash head angles. I have them pointing in different directions to as to cover the large range of working distances I'm using (and move between from shot to shot for the same subject while I'm shooting a continuous sequence every one or two seconds). The flash head directions are delicately balanced to cover the whole range and moving them can lose coverage for low or high magnification shots. Also, while the arms do have ball-heads so the heads can be rotated, the arms are very stiff and difficult to manipulate, so moving the heads up/down, left/right, backwards/forwards is not practical out in the field. And because of the way it all fits together, rotating the heads more than a little can also cause problems with the positioning of the outer diffusion layer, for which I've now managed to get a quite large gap between it and the outer layers of the flash head boxes. I'd love to experiment more, but I'm facing interlocking physical limitations.
Ouch. Easier for me I guess cause I'm dealing with very short working distances.
In terms of illumination, and also for your technique of sometimes holding what the subject is on, yes indeed. Of course there are some advantages of longer working distances too.
Nick

Flickr
Blog
Journey since 2007

Rework and reposts of my images posted in this forum are always welcome, especially if they come with an explanation of what you did and how you did it.

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