Post your best Macro shots

[DanoPhoto]

Very nice pic.

Curious, did you use dedicated flash on this? What recommendations do you have for staged or studio (non-nature) shots?

edit...disregard question about your technique...visted your Flickr site and the info was there...

[Sean Setters]

Very nice pic.

Curious, did you use dedicated flash on this? What recommendations do you have for staged or studio (non-nature) shots?

I used a Paul C. Buff White Lightning x1600 on the shot of the coins. I was using it at about 3/4 power, diffused by an octabox, and positioned fairly close to the coins. This put out a lot of light, which allowed me to shoot at f/16. Truth be told, I probably should have pushed it to f/22 and adjusted the flash power or ISO to compensate, but the slight out-of-focus area at the top didn't really bother me at the time.

The best advice I can give for staged or studio shots is:

1) Make sure you have a decent, re-positionable, yet solid support. A good tripod will help you nail things down. After you get the framing figured out, you have one less thing to worry about because it'll stay the same from that time forward.

2) Studio strobes are wonderful for pseudo macro work. They let you to shoot at narrow apertures allowing for greater depth-of-field while using relatively fast shutter speeds (up to your max sync speed). Of course, with good stability, you can open up the shutter for extended periods of time allowing the ambient light to carry your lighting workload. Many times, however, the color of ambient light is mixed--making consistent color hard to nail down.

3) Speaking of strobes, learn the principles involved in lighting a subject and have a decent amount of modifiers on hand. Some modifiers can be made with a little bit of time and effort, or improvised with a little ingenuity; others will need to be purchased ready-made. Modifiers currently at my disposal include the following, and range in cost from about $5 - $170.

-White umbrellas
-Reflective (silver) umbrellas
-22" silver beauty dish
-16" silver beauty dish w/ grid
-20" white parabolic reflector
-Strip boxes w/ grids
-48" octabox w/ grid
-Small, medium, and large softboxes
-64" extreme silver parabolic light modifier (PLM) with diffusion cover
-Snoots
-Grids
-Flags
-Queen sized bed sheet
-White foam board

4) If you don't own a macro lens, buy some extension tubes. I bought some used extension tubes off of Ebay for around $100. All my macro work is done with them. For as little as I do macro work, the quality is perfectly acceptable to me. You can buy even cheaper extension tubes new from Amazon.

5) Play. The only way you're going to learn a new skill is to practice, make mistakes, and learn what works. If you're curious about a technique, or you want to duplicate something you've seen done, try it until you succeed. After that, you'll have one more skill tucked away in your mind's closet for pulling out when the occasion calls for it.

Sean, Nice shot of the coin----and I took a look at some other work of yours on your flicker account. Your portraits are outstanding as always but I really like the job you did on that press machine---very nice. That had to be a tricky one. I am sure the customer was very happy with it. Nice work.

You know, it took me a full hour to nail that shot down. The machine itself is not terribly interesting or pleasing to the eye, so the lighting and framing had to work wonders. And yes, the client was indeed pleased with it. I was so happy with the shot that I had (8) 8x10 prints of it made on Kodak Metallic Paper and gave it to the employees who worked closest to that machine as a memento.

[DanoPhoto]

5) Play. The only way you're going to learn a new skill is to practice, make mistakes, and learn what works. If you're curious about a technique, or you want to duplicate something you've seen done, try it until you succeed. After that, you'll have one more skill tucked away in your mind's closet for pulling out when the occasion calls for it.

Thanks for all the recommendations. Wll use the all...especially #5...

Will hopefully post some soon for feedback. After the Holidays, of course.