I am still having trouble with the lighting on the eye. I found a small LED light on a small gooseneck and I am going to give that a try for a little spotlight. Stack of 116 using Helicon Focus.
[/i]Metallic Wood Boring Beetle-Buprestidae
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Metallic Wood Boring Beetle-Buprestidae
Genus Dicerca . Very metallic bronze colored. I love the alien robotic look on some of these beetles. This one looks like it melted a little upon re-entry I am still having trouble with the lighting on the eye. I found a small LED light on a small gooseneck and I am going to give that a try for a little spotlight. Stack of 116 using Helicon Focus.
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I am still having trouble with the lighting on the eye. I found a small LED light on a small gooseneck and I am going to give that a try for a little spotlight. Stack of 116 using Helicon Focus.[/i]Take Nothing but Pictures--Leave Nothing but Footprints.
Doug Breda
Doug Breda
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augusthouse
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Yes Doug, many people don't realise the size of the light should be in relation to the subject and think a "spotlight" is a "spotlight" whatever the size of the object.
The lighting terminology generally comes from portraiture and really only relates to the human scale. What is called a spotlight for portraiture would be a floodlight for an insect, and a floodlight for portraiture would be a spotlight if you were photographing a battleship.
That is the reason why on camera type flashes usually produce a harsh spotlight type of effect at normal distances due to their small reflector size compared to the subject, but using the same flash up close for macro subjects like insects, due to the size of it's reflector in proportion to the subject it becomes almost a soft-box.
I believe I read in a book somewhere that somebody used a paper punch to punch a small round hole in a card and put their flash behind to produce the spotlight effect on tiny subjects. I also read, but have never tried it, that if you try this close up to a studio flash head snoot you can get quite a bang since the shock waves from the flash when constricted by a narrow opening actually break the sound barrier!
DaveW
The lighting terminology generally comes from portraiture and really only relates to the human scale. What is called a spotlight for portraiture would be a floodlight for an insect, and a floodlight for portraiture would be a spotlight if you were photographing a battleship.
That is the reason why on camera type flashes usually produce a harsh spotlight type of effect at normal distances due to their small reflector size compared to the subject, but using the same flash up close for macro subjects like insects, due to the size of it's reflector in proportion to the subject it becomes almost a soft-box.
I believe I read in a book somewhere that somebody used a paper punch to punch a small round hole in a card and put their flash behind to produce the spotlight effect on tiny subjects. I also read, but have never tried it, that if you try this close up to a studio flash head snoot you can get quite a bang since the shock waves from the flash when constricted by a narrow opening actually break the sound barrier!
DaveW
Thanks all for your great comments
Craig wrote:
the beetle is 18mm long, about 6mm wide and the head is just shy of 2mm (measured with a steel machinists ruler, not guessing )
Peter, the LED does look blue, so I might not be able to use it.
Craig wrote:
Right now ,for lighting I am using a table lamp with two gooseneck Hi Intensity 40w incandescent bulbs, and a circular white diffuser (like a cup).What are you using for your main light-source and about how big is this beetle?
the beetle is 18mm long, about 6mm wide and the head is just shy of 2mm (measured with a steel machinists ruler, not guessing
)Peter, the LED does look blue, so I might not be able to use it.
Take Nothing but Pictures--Leave Nothing but Footprints.
Doug Breda
Doug Breda
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rjlittlefield
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That's a good general rule, but I like to think about the problem a different way....size of the light should be in relation to the subject...
The way I use is to imagine myself in the subject's place and ask how big the light appears to be. If the light looks "big" -- meaning that it spans a wide angle as seen by the subject -- then it will act like a big white cloud and make fuzzy shadows and big catchlights. If the light looks "small" -- meaning that it spans a narrow angle -- then it will act like direct sun and make sharp shadows and small catchlights.
To a good approximation, the absolute size of the light makes no difference, only the size of the light with respect to its distance from the subject.
Actually one way people get into trouble is by trying to make a lighting rig that is sized to match the subject.
It's challenging (to say the least!) to scale the lights and screens that you'd use for a human portrait down to the size of a fruit fly's head.
On the other hand, if you just replace the human with the fly, in the human-sized lighting setup, then everything works fine except that you'll need a longer exposure because of the magnification.
The setup looks ridiculous, of course, because then you have this huge lighting rig with this teeny little subject in the middle of it. And the large rig is not efficient in terms of power consumption because it's lighting up a space that's much larger than you need.
So the real trick is to make the lighting rig as small as you can while maintaining the correct proportions.
Let the size of the lights drive the size of the setup, while the subject goes along for the ride.
--Rik