Flash

As with tripods I have experimented with a number of flash setups. Here are a few of them.

As well as experimenting with the size, shape and positioning of diffusers and reflectors, I tried a number of different layering materials, shapes and combinations inside diffusers. Here are a few of them.

The setup which proved most successful, and which I currently use, is based on a Venus Optics KX800 twin flash. As with the other setups, I tried various approaches to diffusion. Here are a few of them, with which I tried various internal diffusion layers.

This is the current setup, shown on an FZ330 with Raynox 150 when being used to photograph wasps flying in and out of their nest.

Here are some of the photos from that session.

150.06 - 150.09

I generally don't use flash for botanical subjects because I prefer the look of natural light. Only very occasionally do I raise the flash and use low power flash (undiffused) for fill light when shooting into the light. I am more likely to use exposure bracketing than flash fill, but my use of exposure bracketing is very occasional. I could probably do well to use a bit more fill flash and exposure bracketing.

These days I use flash most of the time for invertebrates, exceptions being larger insects such as butterlies, dragonflies and damselflies which I tend to see in bright sunny conditions and use available light. (That said, I have not seen a dragonfly or a damselfly for some time, and hardly any butterflies either.)

The bendy arms on the KX800 allow for great flexibility, including using one flash head to illuminate the background to avoid black areas. However, I have settled into leaving the heads in a position where the illumination works for the magnifications that I use most of the time. When I want to raise dark backgrounds  I slow down the shutter speed, if necessary raising the ISO (although I don't like raising the ISO much with the FZ330, which is my main tool for invertebrates, as it has a rather noisy sensor).

The KX800 is a manual flash. I was doubtful as to how that would work out, having previously used TTL flashes, but it turned out to be better because it proved quick and easy to find and set a suitable flash level, and having found and set it I got more consistent results than with my TTL flashes.

The KX800 also has the advantage of working with all my cameras that have a hot shoe, unlike my TTL flashes which are limited to particular camera brands.

I am probably too much in the habit of using flash as the dominant light source for invertebrates at the moment and might benefit from using a more balanced combination of flash and natural light.

Tripod, monopod, steadying sticks

I have an on/off relationship with my tripods, mainly off at the moment. Over the years I have tried a number of tripod setups. Here are several examples.

I have also tried a monopod and some home made "steadying sticks".

Almost none of these setups got used beyond the experimental stage. The one setup that has worked well has been a Benro carbon fibre tripod with a reversible central column to which is attached a Velbon extending arm.

Before that I used a similar setup with a much heavier metal construction and adjustments that were similar in flexibility to the Benro/Velbon setup but more difficult and slower to adjust.

It is true that using a tripod has benefits for my most common subject matter - flowers etc and medium sized invertebrates. If using available light a tripod lets me use slower shutter speeds than I can hand-held, and hence sometimes lower ISO, with less noise and more detail. And for some subjects, such as early morning invertebrates where very long exposures are needed a tripod is essential. Also, whether using available light or flash, using a tripod helps frame the shot more precisely, especially as magnification increases, and makes it possible to retain the framing for repeated shots of the same subject, avoiding the strain of maintaining the same position for extended periods. Holding the camera steady with a tripod can also make it easier for autofocus to engage and for the area focused on not to have moved too far between focus engaging and the shot being captured.

However, with the techniques I am currently using shutter speed is not much of a problem. I am using post focus most of the time for botanical subjects. Shutter speed with post focus cannot be slower than 1/30 second, and this turns out to be fast enough with the G9 and 60mm macro to get sharp hand-held images of stationary subjects most of the time at the relatively low magnifications I typically use. It seems that erratic subject motion in the often breezy conditions here is more of an issue than blur from hand-shake, and using a tripod does not help with subject motion, especially when different parts of a plant move in different directions and/or by different amounts, which is very problematic for stacking. The stacking software does not seem to have a problem dealing with the coherent movement of the subject/scene (all of the scene moving in the same way) caused by hand-shake; as long as the individual images are sharp it doesn't seem to matter if they wander around from frame to frame, including moving around by fairly large amounts.

I am comfortable using up to ISO 800 with the G9, or ISO 1600 if I have to, but almost all the time recently I have found that I can use ISO 400 or lower, generally using shutter speeds faster than the 1/30 second minimum, often considerably faster. 

For medium sized invertebrates I typically use flash as the dominant light source. This means that the effective shutter speed is the length of the flash pulse, which is somewhere in the region of 1/2500 sec with the flash I am using at the power I am using it. This means that image blur from hand-shake is not an issue at the scene sizes I photograph, usually no smaller than around 9mm wide.

As to precise framing and retaining framing over an extended period, I have found that if this becomes problematic I can relax the framing, leaving a larger "dead space" outside the prospective final image perimeter to allow the framing to wander around but still get sufficient image quality for my purposes despite using a larger crop.

It also turns out that for these sorts of subjects, magnifications and techniques focusing issues are not problematic.

Therefore, for much of what I photograph the practical benefits of using a tripod are limited, and these need to be weighed against the disadvantages. 

Setting up the tripod takes time and, especially with invertebrates, can lead to missed shots. (This can occasionally be an issue with plants when particularly propitious illumination can disappear quite fast.) Using a tripod also makes it more difficult/slower to explore alternative angles on and distances from the subject. I do a lot of this with botanical subjects, and sometimes with invertebrates too. 

Sometimes it is simply not possible to use a tripod. I have an extremely flexible tripod, but even so I sometimes need to get angles on subjects (invertebrates and plants) that I cannot reach when using the tripod. With my current setup dismounting and remounting the tripod from the four way focus rail is fiddly and tedious.

I find that photo sessions are less fluid and more laboured when using a tripod, and less enjoyable. 

Given this balance of benefits and disbenefits, I tend not to use a tripod for these most common of my subject areas.

I don't often photograph smaller scenes, but when I do framing and focusing issues are more evident. I tend to use a tripod for these, although as with most of my tripod use, current and previous, I keep my hands on the camera rather than using remote shutter release. I find this makes it easier to get and retain the precise framing that I want. The problem I find with hands-off operation is that when I take my hands off the camera the rig settles into a different position, altering the framing. When photographing small scenes this can make it very difficult to get the required framing because I have to use trial and error to get the rig to settle into the position I want it in to take the photo.

For common birds in flight I don't think using a tripod would be at all helpful. I use fast shutter speeds so hand shake is not a problem, and I need speedy, instant to instant, flexbility of positioning. 

For cloudscapes and sunsets I don't see a tripod being particularly beneficial while the sun is still above the horizon because shutter speeds are fast enough to avoid hand shake and when using relatively wide angles  changes in alignment from shot to shot don't appear to be an issue when shooting exposure brackets. However, for panoramas and when light levels fall when the sun drops behind the horizon a tripod would be beneficial. (I say "would be" because I have not done much of this type of photography for some time.)

Overall then my attitude to using a tripod is that I'll use one when the balance of benefits favours doing so, but for most of what I am doing at the moment that does not seem to be the case.

Are these close-ups or macros?

This is a subject that, like equivalence, can produce repeated, lengthy and sometimes acrimonious arguments. A lot of the time it revolves around the "true/correct/proper" definition of "macro". The most often used definition is that a capture is a macro if the size of the image of the subject on the camera sensor is the same size or larger than the size of the subject itself. This is known as being "at least 1:1".

In comparison, "1:2" means that the image on the sensor is 1/2 the size of the subject, while "2:1" means that the image on the sensor is twice the size of the subject.

To my way of thinking this definition has the merit of being unambiguous, well-defined, precise and fairly easy to understand. Also, to my way of thnking, it has the disadvantage in certain (rather common) circumstances of being not terribly useful and/or being very misleading. This has to do with sensor sizes.

Let's just consider 1:1 for the moment. A capture is or is not 1:1 irrespective of the sensor size. If the same subject is captured 1:1 on a large sensor and on a small sensor then you will see more of the subject on the larger sensor, but if you look at an area on the larger sensor the size of the smaller sensor you will see exactly what the smaller sensor would capture for that area.

This is sometimes known as "1:1 is 1:1" or similar, often coupled with something like "It is either macro or it isn't. Sensor size doesn't alter that."

Using the 1:1 definition of macro, I wouldn't disagree with any of that. 

However, the 1:1 definition also means that the image on the top left below is a macro and the one on the top right isn't, and that the two images below them are not macros either (none of these is cropped btw).

The reason for this is that the image at the top left was captured with a 60mm macro lens operating at 1:1 on a Panasonic G80, which has a sensor around 18mm wide. Since it was operating at 1:1 the scene was around 18mm wide. The image at the top right was captured with an FZ330 bridge camaera with a Raynox 250 close-up lens. The FZ330 has a sensor around 6mm wide. Since the scene was 18mm wide, the image on the FZ330 sensor  was only 1/3 the size of the scene, and so this was not a macro as the magnification was only 1:3. The other two, closer-in, shots were also captured with the FZ330 and Raynox 250, and neither of those two scenes is as small as 6mm wide (the smallest one, at the bottom right, was around 9mm wide. An image captured with the FZ330 would only be 1:1 if the scene was 6mm wide or less, so neither of these was a macro.

When different sensor sizes are involved (and I use four different sensor sizes) I think talking in terms of images being 1:1 macros or not is not very helpful, and tends to confuse the issue. I therefore prefer to talk in terms of scene widths and the kit needed to be able to photograph those scene widths rather than whether the required magnification is 1:1, 2:1, 1:2 or whatever. 

I also don't see much benefit in talking of images being macro or not based on the 1:1 definition. In my own mind I use much looser definitions of macro and close-up. I rather liked one of the descriptions I read on one of the forums, along the lines of "If it fits on the tip of your finger it is a macro. If it fits in the palm of your hand it is a close-up." If people want a size to think about I sometimes suggest that if the scene is less than an inch or so across it is a macro, otherwise it is a close-up. For my own photos I tend to think of my invertebrate photos as macros and my botanical images as close-ups. Sometimes I just refer to my photos as close-ups and leave it at that.

I don't think there is much benefit in arguing about what macro "really" means. 

Why don't you identify the subjects?

I would very much prefer to be able to identify my subjects and relate interesting facts about their lifecycles, habits etc. Unfortunately I have had a life long problem of memory retention and recall. I can't remember the names of things, or information about them - types of cheese, football teams, film stars, pretty much anything. With only a handful of exceptions, for invertebrates I can only remember a few high level terms like "fly", "wasp", "bee" (and I can get those three confused), "spider" or "beetle". I occasionally use one of my books to identify an invertebrate, but a few minutes later it has gone from my mind. For flowers I have for 12 years depended on my wife to (repeatedly) tell me the names of particular plants that I have photographed when I need to know the name for a post I am doing. 

I suppose this is one reason why I think of my photography in terms of trying to create "pretty pictures", because that doesn't involve having to know anything about the subject matter - it is (for me) just to do with light, colours, shapes, lines, textures etc.

What are those long filenames?

If you look at any of my images at Flickr, or on some sites such as TalkPhotography.co.uk, you may see long filenames such as 

1385 16 2018_09_27 P1550950_DxO SP7 LR7 1400h 

or 

1401 12 P1000535 G9+60 PF6K 81f ISO ISO 400 F2.8 1-160 A8,4+innerB8,4 LR7 1400h

The first part of the name lets me find the original of the image if I want to rework it. The rest of the name tells me something about how I produced the image.

I gather my images into sets, each of which has an identifying number, for example 1385 and 1401 in this case. I have a spreadsheet which lists these numbers and gives the title for each set. 

Almost all of these sets are uploaded as albums to my Flickr account. The second number is the sequence number of the image within the set.

The information in the rest of the name can include information such as:

• The filename of the original (which may be a raw file, JPEG image or video)
• What applications I used to process the file. In the first example, DXO Optics Pro/PhotoLab, Silkypix and Lightroom
• The size the processed file was outputted, 1400 pixels high in these two examples
• For stacks, some additional information (Exif data gets lost during stack processing). In the second example this includes the gear (Panasonic G9 with Olympus 60mm macro lens), the fact it was captured using 6K video of which 81 frames were stacked, the ISO, aperture and shutter speed, and what stacking method(s) I used and the parameters for those methods, in this case a combination of Helicon Focus methods A and B.

I have changed the information I put in filenames over the years and so they are not consistent and I can't give a definitive list of abbreviations. For some of the earlier ones I can't even remember what one or two of the abbreviations refer to.

I could of course use a digital asset management system (DAM) to keep some or all of this information, which would make it easier to find things. I could for example use Lightroom for this. However, I change the software I use from time to time and over the years I have learnt not to store my data in proprietary formats that I may be unable easily to transfer to a different software product. As a result I use just the basic folder and file naming facilities offered by Windows.

Why so many cameras?

Over the course of 12 years I have accumulated a large number of cameras, buying them (some new, some second hand) at a rate of a bit more than one per year on average. (It was much faster than that in the last six years as in the first six years I only bought a camera once every two years.) And I have kept almost all of them, getting rid of just three that ceased working. I currently have a dozen. Surely that is excessive?

On the forums I often see comments like "Buying new kit won't make you a better photographer", and "It's the photographer not the camera" and "You can make great photos with any camera". There is truth in all these and similar comments. However, I think there is another side to this. In my experience I tend to get better results with one particular camera or camera/lens for a particular type of subject matter. I currently think in terms of the following seven types of subject, for which different kit works best: Larger invertebrates such as butterflies and dragonflies; very small invertebrates such as springtails and barkflies; medium sized invertebrates; botanical subjects; common birds in flight; cloudscapes and sunsets; subjects that turn up when I'm out and about and not particularly "doing" photography.

At the moment I have four different favoured setups for four of those seven subject areas: medium sized invertebrates, botanical subjects, common birds and flight and "out and about". The favoured setups are, respectively, a small sensor bridge camera with close-up lenses and diffused twin flash, a micro four thirds camera with a macro lens, an APS-C camera with an APS-C telezoom lens, and a small sensor travel camera.

The reasons for these four choices are as follows. 

1. For medium sized invertebrates I almost always use minimum aperture and because the effects of diffraction dominate image quality it doesn't matter which setup I use in terms of image quality. The choice of kit therefore comes down to usability. The Pansonic FZ330 bridge camera and G3/5/80/9 used with close-up lenses focus faster with more reliable and precise accuracy than using the LCD screen on the Canon 70D using a macro lens or close-up lenses. This favours the Panasonics. On the Panasonics, close-up lenses have better (longer) working distances than the macro lenses I have, which favours close-up lenses (as it doesn't make any difference to image quality, because of the effects of diffraction). When using the FZ330 with a Raynox 150 close-up lens I get a range of magnifications with which I can do almost all of my invertebrate photography without changing the close-up lens. In contrast, with the G3/5/80/9 I have to keep changing between the Raynox 150 and Raynox 250. This favours the FZ330, which is currently my favoured camera, with a Raynox 150, for medium sized invertebrates.

2. For botanical subjects I am now most of the time using post focus to capture videos from which to extract JPEGs for stacking. The FZ330, G80 and G9 can do this. The FZ330 and G80 are limited to 4K post focus, which produces 8 megapixel JPEGs. With the G9 I can use 6K video, with 18 megapixel JPEGs. I can also use the very flat profile Cinelike D Photo Style, which makes it easy to produce tonality that I very much like in my botanical images. The G9 can do post focus with a macro lens or with a close-up lens on a telezoom camera lens. A macro lens captures very fine detail and opens up to f/2.8, which is good for shutter speeds when working hand-held, which I do much of the time. A macro lens can also focus out to infinity. Close-up lenses have a more limited range over which they can focus and this can be too limited for some scenes. Macro lenses can have issues of focusing speed and accuracy when used for single shots, but because of the way post focus drives the lens, focus accuracy and speed are not an issue when using a macro lens for post focus. Unlike with invertebrates, the shorter working distances of (my) macro lenses is not an issue for botanical subjects. Taking all this into account, my favoured kit for botanical post focus video capture is a G9 with an Olympus 60mm macro.

3. I photograph common birds in flight (mainly gulls) at a local little boating lake. I do this in good light when I can get a good combination of high shutter speed and a small enough aperture to get (my preferred) sufficient depth of field. For this subject matter I use a viewfinder rather than LCD. My Canon 70D is the only one of my cameras that lets me see very clearly what is going on. Even though electronic viewfinders have improved over the years, I still find a marked difference between all of mine (up to and including my Sony A7ii full frame camera) and the optical viewfinder on the 70D. I use a 55-250mm telezoom lens on the 70D which is quite light and so can be used for long periods with no strain, and it is very quick to zoom from wide angle (which I used to locate subjects) in to what I need for shots, and very responsive when changing the zoom, which I need to do quickly for birds that are close by with rapidly changing distances from me. The phase detect focusing on the 70D is very good at focusing on birds that are flying in front of busy backgrounds, which happens a lot at the boating lake. The Panasonics are not so good at this. For these reasons my favoured kit for common birds in flight is the 70D with 55-250 lens.

4. When I am out and about I am much more likely to keep a physically small camera with me, one that will go into a pocket, rather than a larger one. I have found that small sensor travel cameras with very large zoom ranges can, especially when shooting raw, produce images of sufficient quality for my purposes. The SX240 did not shoot raw. The TZ60 does, and the only reason I got the TZ90 was when the TZ60 started to malfunction. The TZ90 is my favoured "carry around" camera.

For a fifth area, cloudscapes and sunsets, I have yet to do thorough comparison tests between different setups but I may well end up using a fifth camera type, full frame (Sony A7ii), by itself or with a second camera to cover longer focal lengths, which might be of any of the other types. There are a lot of combinations to consider.

For the other two areas, larger invertebrates and very small invertebrates, I have, respectively, three and two setups which seem to do the job equally well. For large invertebrates these are the FZ330, G5/80/9 with 45-175 or 70D with 55-250, all three with and without a mild Canon 500D close-up lens. For very small invertebrates my best two options are the FZ330 or G5/80/9, with either a very powerful Raynox MSN-202 close-up lens or two Raynox 250s stacked together or a Raynox 250 and a Raynox 150 stacked.  The G series cameras have the advantage that the 45-175 does not change length when zooming, which makes very powerful close-up lenses much easier to use. The FZ330 has the advantage that it provides a larger range of magnification with any particular close-up lens setup, and because of its long, 600mm equivalent maximum focal length it can sometimes be used with larger working distances than my other cameras (because it can sometimes use a less powerful close-up lens with a longer working distance to cover a particular scene size).

The choice of kit for particular purposes is therefore highly dependent on the specific characteristics both of the subject matter and of particular combinations of kit. It is much more complicated than something simple like "you get better results with a larger sensor", or "specialist macro lenses produce better results than general puspose lenses". It is all very context dependent, and has resulted in my using a variety of kit for particular purposes.

So have my camera acquisitions been excessive? With one exception, it doesn't feel that way to me. Two were direct replacements for cameras that I was using but had stopped working. Three were "historical", relatively old and very inexpensive second hand cameras bought just to see what they were like to use. For the rest I think I can make a good case for needing them to explore some new facility which looked as if it might help me produce photos that I liked better for particular subject areas. 

There was one exception. In 2018 I thought I had worked out what my setups would be longer term, and one of those was a Panasonic G80, which would have had two roles, with different lenses. Because of the great trouble I have had with dust on sensors, and because my favoured kit setups were now settled for the longer term, I bought a second G80 so I could avoid changing lenses. That turned out to be a mistake because I subsequently decided that the G80 setups would not be used as I had envisaged, with probably only one of them at most having a place in my favoured toolset. 

Why so many photos?

Over the course of 12 years I have probably captured over 200,000 images. In the past couple of years I have used aperture bracket bursts some of the time for botanical subjects. This produces seven images for each press of the shutter button. However, for the first 10 years  or so (covering the majority of the captures) I used individual single shots. In a single day, even without bracketing, I have very often captured several hundred images, and on some days over a thousand. Why so many captures?

Several reasons. One is that for a lot of my subjects I have very high failure rates. A lot of the shots are unusable, most often because the centre of focus is not in exactly the right place and so the wrong bits of the subject are in focus (wrong compared to how I want the image to look). The smaller the subject is the more difficult it is to get the focus placement right. Also, it is often breezy around here and plants move around in the breeze, the longer and thinner their stems the more they move. Most of the invertebrates I photograph are on plants, so even if they are standing still they move as the plants they are on move in the breeze. Also, whether or not it is breezy, invertebrate subjects may also wander around. Or even if they are standing still and there is no breeze bits of them may wave around, antennae especially, and legs when they are grooming. And I work hand-held a lot of the time, which adds to the variability of where the focus is centred. So I often take multiple shots to increase the chances of getting at least one that is appropriately focused.

I always take a few shots if I get a chance (not just with invertebrates, but with plants too). Of course with invertebrates they may not give me that chance. The breezier the conditions, the more shots I take. I hardly ever stop to review shots to see if they have worked; I don't find that a practical proposition out in the field, looking at the tiny camera screen, and with invertebrates it is easy to miss good shots if you get sidetracked into examining shots you have already taken rather than paying attention to the subject.

Sometimes an animal may be doing something interesting - building a web, wrapping prey, feeding, grooming, mating, shedding its skin, inflating its wings, blowing bubbles, interacting in some way with another animal of its own kind or a different kind, or just wandering around. When I find something like that going on I keep taking photos for as long as it goes on, or until it becomes too repetitive for me to want to continue. This might involve hundreds of captures for a single subject. 

Click on an image to see a larger version

One subject, wasps flying in an out of their nest, involved several thousand captures (twice over, for different nests in different years). Wasps are very, very difficult to capture in flight even when they are flying in and out of the same small hole, and the failure rate for this was very high indeed. It wasn't simply that the focus was a bit misplaced. The wasps movee so fast that very often the wasp would have left the frame by the time the image was captured.

For botanical shots I am interested in the way the look of a subject changes as the light changes and I often photograph the same subject in different conditions on different days, sometimes on the same day. And sometimes a plant is sitting in pooled light coming through foliage above it which is moving in the breeze, creating continually changing patterns of light and shade. When I come across this I may take lots of shots in the hope that one or more looks good. The patterns change too fast to wait for a good pattern and then photograph it. Like with wasps in flight, by the time you and the camera have reacted the moment has passed, so  you end up capturing lots of images in the hope of getting some that work. I also explore different angles on the subject as this can radically affect the look of backgrounds and how well they fit with the subject.

With aperture bracketing I take seven shots for each press of the shutter button, from f/2.8 to f/22. This lets me choose the balance I like for a particular scene between the amount of the subject that is in focus and the way that the background looks, both of which change as the aperture changes. This often involves slow shutter speeds for the smaller apertures and I usually capture several bracket sets of a subject, here too hoping that each aperture will have worked in at least one of the bracket sets.

Here are some examples where I kept several of the images from a seven image aperture bracket set. I do like having a bit going on, or at least hinted at, in my backgrounds if it seems to be harmonious with the subject, to add some context and/or add some visual variety and complexity. Many people of course prefer simpler, plainer backgrounds. 

Another cause of larger numbers of captures is that for invertebrates I like to have series of images of a subject varying from close in on the subject out to seeing the subject quite small in its wider environment. 

In such cases I will be doing multiple captures for each framing, trying to get a good result for that framing. The variation in framing can go on for some time if the subject is doing something interesting or moving around.

So I capture lots of shots to try and get some that I like.

But why do I keep so many similar shots? Wouldn't it be better just to select the best ones and throw the rest away? To some extent that is what I am aiming for with my portfolio, and with this blog too for that matter, picking the ones I like best. 

As mentioned in the first post in this blog, Flickr is something of a dumping ground for my photos, and a few of other people's photos that I have worked on, with their permission, to discuss on line. However, I do cull quite heavily as I go through a set of images. With invertebrates, where the number of captures is typically much higher than with botanical subjects, I often get rid of 80 to 95% or so of the captured images, either because they didn't work, or when they did work because I only want to keep one of a set of very similar images. It is similar with common birds in flight, where I keep relatively few of the captures. With botanical subjects and my infrequent other subjects I tend to capture smaller numbers of images and keep a greater proportion of them.

When I'm getting ready to finalise a set of images to put up at Flickr I look through it as a slideshow and where there are images that are too similar to retain (my) interest I remove some, and I keep doing that until I'm content to sit through the whole lot without getting bored by repitition of too similar scenes and subjects. I'm sure there are still more than many people would want to see, but that is where the portfolio will hopefully be of some benefit, and perhaps this blog too.