Yes, More Bees

This is filler material since I haven't made much progress on any of my bigger posts (Sonia trigger review, $30 garage studio).

On a whim the other day I decided to go out to the garden and shoot a little with my macro lens (a 100mm FD with EOS/FD converter). Boy, the biggest problem with the thing is it doesn't automatically stop down when the shutter is released since the mechanical aperture release doesn't work on EOS. Well, it does, but there's a big difference between automatically hitting that lever and rotating the wheel on the converter. The end result is it is difficult to find focus on fast moving objects, let alone compose a frame well.

So, out of 90 shots, I got maybe six decent ones. Oddly enough, many of them looked very similar, like these last two. Click to see them larger...

I used strobes because I wanted to get as much depth of field as possible and avoid shutter speed blur and noise from high ISOs. Plus, I just wanted to play with my flashes :)

At first, I tried to use the sun as a third light (actually, at first I tried to use a strobe as a third light, but that's another story). My goal was to use the sun as fill but I quickly found having my key light be something other than the sun gave me very different results in the image than when I looked through the viewfinder. So, instead, I used the standard cross-lighting the sun approach but lined up my key light with the sun, so what I saw in the viewfinder approximated the final image and I was able to drop the ambient (sun) about four stops down so my 1/200sec sync speed didn't cause any blur at magnification. For whatever reason, my radio triggers were having trouble getting the 1/250sec sync speed; maybe I need new batteries.

Anyway, I know for some of you this is just a lot of mumbo-jumbo. Feel free to ignore it and just enjoy the shots of the bees.

For you technically oriented people, I ended up getting some pretty decent pictures of bees, definitely sharper than most of my other shots with a much better depth of field. For next time, I may try to restrict my light a bit more to darken the background. I think it could look REALLY cool if I get it right.

Of course, I won't even bother submitting these to microstock sites; I'm sure they've got tons of bee shots already!

Backyard Garden Macros

Bear with me...

The final installment of the Sigma 600mm f/8 review is coming along, but there's a lot of images to include. It'll take a few more days to finish.

For now you get some macro shots...

I took the Canon 100mm f/4 Macro out back to give it a little try (note this is an old FD mount lens, not the newer Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM). Not a real test, just messing around a bit.

The main reason I took it out was to shoot an albino spider I spotted (no idea what species it is, maybe it is a juvenile, if spiders have such things?). The first sequence was backlit by the sun:


After a number of shots (including the image that opened this post) I grabbed my flash and tried backlighting with the sun. Sadly, the spider moved, so none of the shots were really what I was looking for, but it does show that the Canon 100mm f/4 Macro can perform decently.


BTW, these last two shots are cropped to less than half the height of the original frame (the spider was tiny, maybe 7mm long?). As it was, I was using the 100mm (which gives a little better than 1:2) along with a second extension tube to get down near 1:1. I used a tripod but the wind was blowing decently, causing the blurriness in the sun-only shot. The flash sharpened it right up though.

The image that opened this post is a 100% crop (if you click on it) showing the spider's fangs. I will admit that I applied sharpening to it. Pretty cool, huh? (FYI, that one was without the flash)

Finally, I'll end with a closeup of a flower (this was maybe 1:4?). I just liked the colors and the contrast between the texture and delicacy of the point. My wife knows what kind of flower it is, but I forgot...

Lenses on eBay: Two Negative Experiences

Sorry for the long delay in posts. Life has gotten really busy in both of my jobs, so post frequency will likely decrease during the rest of February. The Sigma 600mm review is ready to be written, I just need to find the time to do it.

In my post A Guide to Buying Lenses on eBay, I mentioned that I'd had a few problems buying lenses. Oddly enough, out of the six lenses I've purchased, it has only been the last two Canon FD lenses that I've had trouble with: a Sigma 600mm f/8 Mirror and a Canon 100mm f/4 Macro.

Sigma 600mm f/8 Reflex

As I mentioned earlier, this was an impulse buy that I didn't fully research before bidding. More specifically, I didn't directly ask the seller if the glass was clear. I knew that the seller was inexperienced and would have normally asked, but I had decided not to buy it and only changed my mind less than a minute before the auction ended since the price was so cheap. FYI, I got the lens for $78 + $14 S/H, a very good price for the FD-mount version.

But, not asking the fungus question ended up coming back and biting me in the... derrière.

95% of the time, lenses on eBay are fungus free even if they don't specifically mention it in the listing. In this case though, the lens really was in great condition, except the main mirror had some spots of fungus on it. The outside of the lens is pretty much mint, which is probably why the seller didn't notice the fungus on the inside (I assume).

Here's a (soft) overview image to give you an idea of scale. The fungus/mold dots are on the upper part of the mirror (which is reflecting the blue sky in the middle of the image. There's two spots on the very edge and one lighter spot farther into the mirror between the other two.

Here's a detail image with better focus. Again, there's a nasty one on the left (almost looks like it ate through the mirror) a light one in the center and another light one on the right edge.

When I tilted the lens in the sunlight, I got a real idea of the damage. The dark spot on the left fans out quite a bit, the center one is larger than it seemed, and the one on the right is much larger than it initially appeared (note that a lot of it is obscured by the shadow edge). Note how the fungus spreads on the mirror (or any lens) outside of what you can see. From what I've heard, often fungus often etches the mirror permanently.
BTW, I know the lens looks super dirty, but in reality it is very clean. This angle (with the sun beating on it) really shows EVERYTHING. Also, the best way to avoid fungus is to store the lens as dry as possible (like adding a desiccant to your camera bag). The best way to remove it is... well, I'm still working on that.

So, after I realized the fungus problem, I was a little torn. On one hand, the seller stated the lens condition was 'mint' and fungus is obviously not a mint situation. I was also willing to keep the lens; the fungus shouldn't substantially damage image quality. And, in my mind, the seller obviously didn't know the fungus was there. I did withhold posting positive feedback because I knew that was my only leverage in this situation.

So, after some debate, I decided to ask for a partial refund. I actually felt quite bad doing it since it seemed a bit like feedback blackmail, but the lens condition is obviously not mint. FYI, if I'd actually asked if the glass was clear and the seller told me it was (like usual) then I would have very forcefully asked for a large percentage rebated.

In this case, I sent the seller an e-mail directly to her account:

Hi xxxx,

I received the lens last week and it is in great shape as you said, except... It has a small amount of fungus/mold on the main mirror. I've attached images to show you what I mean -- in 6569 you can see the three-four spots of mold, and in 6573 you can see the spread of the mold across the mirror for the spots.

I honestly think you didn't know about the fungus (which usually grows if there is moisture in/on the lens and it is stored for a long time). But you did list the lens as MINT in the listing and I definitely would not have spent so much if I had known about the fungus. Fungus is hard to get rid of, often permanently damages the lens, and significantly lowers the resale value. In this situation, I doubt it impacts the image quality much, but I'm going to have to take some steps to kill it and clean it up.

I'd still like the lens, but I'd like to ask you for a partial refund based on the condition of the lens, maybe $15. Are you willing to do this?

Thank you for your time. I apologize to hassle you with this and I firmly believe you had no knowledge of the damage.

-Sean

PS If you have other lenses from your Dad's collection I recommend checking them for fungus too. Often, growth can be avoided by putting a silica gel in with the equipment to absorb moisture and changing it every once in a while.

I got no response, but a few days later, I got a message asking for feedback which indicated she hadn't received the e-mail above (SPAM filter). So I resent it through eBay and she immediately wrote me back:

$15 is VERY reasonable. I appreciate you getting back with me, as I had NO IDEA of the mold issue. It was stored in a very dry, dark place, but I can't speak for how it was stored prior to me inheriting it from my father. He's always so good about those things. Anyway, thanks for getting with me to work things out! Just send me an invoice for the $15.00 and I will be more than happy to pay it right away! Thanks again!

So, after that, everything went smoothly. Ultimately, I paid $92-15 = $77, including shipping, for a slightly fungus-damaged lens. I'm quite happy with the way things turned out (maybe I should have asked for a larger refund?) and I gave her positive feedback. My plan with the fungus is to keep an eye on it and if it gets any worse, I'll open the lens and figure out how to clean it. At this point though, it isn't worth the risk of damage to clean it. I did irradiate it in the sun for a few hours so hopefully that will stop the growth.


Canon 100mm f/4 Macro

The other eBay problem I've had is with a Canon 100mm f/4 Macro (FD-mount) I purchased Jan 20th for $50 + $15 S/H (a really good price).

The problem is, it hasn't arrived yet. Here's the tracking info on the lens:

Label/Receipt Number: 0479 7634 5650 3603 3692 Detailed Results:

• Acceptance (APC), January 22, 2008, 1:06 pm, MONTROSE, CO 81401
• Undeliverable as Addressed, January 25, 2008, 4:15 am, MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA 94043
• Processed, January 29, 2008, 10:05 pm, DENVER, CO 80217
• Processed, February 08, 2008, 5:03 am, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94188
• Processed, February 11, 2008, 6:57 pm, DENVER, CO 80266

Yeah, seriously. So it got here, had a bad address on it or something, went back to Colorado. Sat around somewhere for almost two weeks, went back to SF, then went back to Colorado. What the hell is going on?

The seller told me he'd send it out as soon as it got returned to him. But it has yet to arrive back after three weeks. I have to assume the seller screwed something up when he sent it out (he said a bunch of other items he mailed had similar problems) but I have to place some blame on the USPS too. I'd call them to track it down, but the seller is the only one that can do that. The seller did offer me a refund, but at this point, I'm fine waiting for the lens since I got a really good deal on it.

That is, assuming the lens doesn't get stuck in CO for another couple of weeks.

Update 2/19: The Canon 100mm f/4 finally arrived (I had gotten notice on Friday that the seller had received it from the USPS and sent it out again). I expect the problem was the seller put my house number as 722 instead of 772 (which is surprising, since he included a shipping list with the correct address, and you'd think he'd correct the address after the first delivery problem). I'm lucky it found my house the second time around. The condition is pretty rough, but for the price, it seems good. I'll clean it up and post a review in the next few weeks once I've spent some time with it.

Anatomy of a Photo: Staring Down a Fly

Our Hero
(all photos can be clicked to see them larger)

Above is my highest scoring DPC entry ever, What are you looking at?. Even more notable is that it got a 6.8 in a the November free study, and I was expecting about a 6. I guess DPC'ers like bugs; fly macros always seem to do super well.

Although, if you think about it, a fly is just about the perfect macro subject:

1. They're all over the place. It isn't hard to find a fly on any given day, as opposed to something like a praying mantis. I haven't seen a praying mantis in decades.
   
2. They like to hang out in one spot and are relatively docile -- I was within inches of the fly above and he just looked at me.
   
3. They have great macro detail with large compound eyes, hairs all over their body, membranous wings, and interesting mouth parts. All at a level which we don't normally see, but is readily apparent at 1:1 or 2:1 magnification.

Getting the Shot:

He was buzzing around one morning while I was cleaning up the kitchen, so of course, I dropped the broom, grabbed my camera, and outfitted my camera with 20mm of extension tubes, my reversed Nikkor-H 50mm F/2, and my newly-made macro ringflash mounted on my Sunpak 383 in the hot shoe.

Then, I proceeded the chase the sucker around, blinding him with the flash whenever I could get a decent shot. The combination gave me approximately 2:1 magnification. It was also my first time using the macro ringflash "in the wild".

The first place I got him (the "money shot") was when he landed on the corner of one of the plastered white walls in the kitchen (hence the moon-like texture on the white surface). The image has been rotated 90 degrees to the right, plus another few degrees to get the horizon perfectly horizontal. The shooting parameters were F/16, 1/200s, and ISO 100. I think the Sunpak 383 was at 1/4 or 1/2 power. At left is a high-res result of the file. I also posted a high-res shot on Flickr (but not as high-res as the shot at left).

I shot handheld, which ended up making focus super-difficult. The process was to depress the aperture lever on the Nikkor-H to open it up, lock my focus with the bright(er) viewfinder, then pop it back into the working aperture and take the shot without moving. At 1:1 I have no problems, but at 2:1 I had a pretty low success rate.

When I first looked through the images I actually didn't think the image was good. For one thing, I had screwed up the settings and not noticed at the time, making the image very dark. More on the extensive post-processing later. For another, I didn't get enough light on the back of the fly and I had wanted to get the wing detail.

When I looked the next day, I realized this image has a lot more punch to it than the others. While I am disappointed that I lost the wing detail, the light-dark contrast, fixed stare of the fly, and focus are dead on.


Lighting:

A few words about the lighting. Technically, I used on-camera flash since the Sunpak 383 was in the hot shoe and the macro ring flash adapter just moves the light down to the lens. But, from the fly's point of view, he was facing a 16 foot ring light about 6 feet in front of him which is about as off camera flash as you can get. Kind of makes the lighting a bit more nuanced than you might think. Also, the wall did a lot to both fill the underside of the fly yet shadow the rear part of the fly.

Yet, as nice as this shot came out, I generally feel that straight ringflash leaves macro subjects a bit flat and lifeless. The best use of the ring flash is in conjunction with backlight or side light, which I used on my later images of the fly. Remember, you can't get the donut catchlights when your subject has a compound eye!

Another thing to keep in mind, which worked to my benefit in this image, is that the light drops off very rapidly at macro distances. This causes the flash to be very bright on the front of the subject (an advantage since the ring diffuser eats so much light) yet very dark even a centimeter behind. So you need some sort of second light on your background if you don't want a black background. And ambient is really tough to work with since apertures are small and any camera shake is greatly magnified in macros. Another issue to keep in mind is any foreground items will almost always be blown out by the brightness of the flash.

My general macro scheme from now on will be to use the ring as fill and a second flash (or the sun) as a side or backlight. Ringflash only will be useful, but only if I really want to isolate the subject and darken the background.


Post Processing:

At right, you can see what I started with. Yeah, that's dark.

Really dark.

The problem was I had the lens at a larger aperture on accident, and when I stopped down I didn't boost the flash power or the ISO. Luckily, I shot RAW (like I usually do for anything remotely tricky) so I could address the problem in RawShooter Essentials. As I've mentioned in Quick Tip #7, RAW lets you save exposure problems.

So, the first step is to adjust everything using RSE. Here is a screen-capture with my adjustments (click to see it full-size):


I used pretty much every feature:

• Color balance adjustment was minimal. The copy paper changes the color of the flash a bit (turns it slightly blue I think) but the camera doesn't have too much trouble detecting it.
• I had to use almost two stops of exposure compensation, a bunch of fill light, added shadow contrast (deepening the blacks) and removed highlight contrast (which helps to not blow out highlight detail).
• Max the saturation. Gotta have those eyes red.
• Some sharpness and detail extraction. Honestly, probably not even needed since I downsampled it anyway.
• A decent amount of noise suppression.

The uncropped end result after RAW conversion is to the left. This has been resized and had a USM pass, but that's it. I converted into TIFF so I could continue to battle the noise and the darkness of the image in PSP XI; I probably boosted brightness almost another stop using curves.

The end result of the boosting of exposure (or pushing in film terminology) is the noise is equivalent to ISO 800. And for DPC, noise is bad. So I had to be real aggressive with noise reduction, starting in RSE, and then running two passes of noise reduction in PSP XI. In my opinion, NeatImage produces the best results and preserves the most image detail, but it doesn't work for 16-bit per pixel images. PSP XI is a relatively close second, and for whatever reason, RSE's noise reduction isn't that great, especially at higher levels.

Other than that, I did a lot of localized sharpening, cloning, and HSV. Specifically, the eyes needed even more saturation and a little brightness boost, but not as much sharpening as the legs. Oversharpening the eyes made them look really bad. There were also a lot of noise-removal artifacts on the horizon, so I deselected those areas during the second sharpening pass.

Again, the high-res version (approximately 1/4 of the pixels of the original, a 50% reduction in each dimension) is at right. You can see it still doesn't have as much detail as can be represented in the pixels -- a factor of both an imperfect optical path and noise problems. Luckily, at DPC sizes (640pix) the image really pops and doesn't lack detail.


Conclusion and Bonus Image:

Overall, I'm really happy with the shot. Yeah, I'd love to get more detail and less noise, but I'm sure I'll take more pictures of flies. They really are impressive creatures that we rarely see up close.

As I mentioned earlier, I kept shooting after the DPC shot and start experimenting with the ringflash and a hard side-light to bring out details in the fly. Most of the shots aren't great, especially since the fly decided to move onto our sliding glass door and got rather active, but I have one nice one to share with you below. This was shot at 2:1 (reversed Nikkor-H with extension tubes), 1/200s, ISO 200. The angle isn't nearly as dynamic, but I love the color and detail on the back of the fly.

Enjoy!

DIY Macro Ring Flash #3: Usage

(rev Nikkor-H 50mm, f/16, 1/250s, ISO 100)

This is the final post in my series about my DIY Macro Ring Flash light modifier. I'd recommend reading the Introduction first, then the Construction, then this post. To refresh your memory, this is what I'm working with:


Depending on the shot, the lens I've used is either a Canon 50mm f/1.8 prime, Nikkor-H 50mm f/2 (reversed for approx 1:1 macro), or Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 (above). Wherever possible, I've noted the shooting parameters. Of course, I've had a real hard time remembering what I set my flash power too, so those all have implicit question marks next to them. All were taken with a Canon 20D. And of course, click to see them larger.


Analyzing the Light:

The first step is to really analyze what sort of light I get from ring flash, and more specifically my ring light construction. As Strobist says, ringlight is a bit cliche in high fashion modeling circles. I mean how many pouty models can you really look at with that halo shadow on the wall behind them (actually, I can look at quite a few without getting tired, but...). To demonstrate the effect, I shot my trusty wedding cake topper in front of the wall (Canon 50mm, f/6.3, 1/250s, ISO100, 1/4 power). There you go... cliche ringflash shadows.

Ultimately, a ring flash is simply an area light located on the lens axis. Move it off the camera, and it is essentially a soft box with a hole in it. In the case of my macro version, the area is pretty small (maybe 6 inches in diameter). So if the ring is large compared to the subject, you get the nice soft halo shadows (due to light from each side going around the object) and the brightest part of the object is normal to (facing) the camera. Also, you get a really nice, slow, roll off of light around the subject with some wrap-around light.

But, if the ring is small and/or far away from the subject, the wrap-around light is lost and the ring light acts as an on-camera flash exactly on the lens axis. For instance, the image at left I used the ring flash as fill and it gives slightly better results than on-camera flash because the light is coming directly from the lens, not 3 inches above it. It also helps that the total area of the ring flash is much larger than an average on-camera flash which makes a more pleasing fill. (Tamron @ 20mm, f/3.2, 1/30s, ISO400, 1/2 power)

When it comes down to it though, this flash modifying contraption really isn't meant for human subjects (although it works well as fill light). It really won't give a different look than a small on-camera flash and it lacks the punch to really light up a room (the light path and diffuser eat a ton of light, something like 4-5 stops by my estimation). At 400 ISO you can get it to cover maybe 6 feet. If you are serious about getting cover of full bodies, you'll want to look at a beefy ringlight like the Strobist ring flash. My flash does work pretty well on faces though as long as you are pretty close and fill the frame (sorry, I don't have any flatterying face photos yet).

It was designed for macros, so that's what I'll discuss next.


Macro Use:

I'll admit it: I like to chase bugs and animals around the yard shooting macros. And that's why I built this thing, because it is nearly impossible to not blur a 1:1 macro at f/16 in natural light shooting handheld without going to ISO 1600 (which introduces more grain than I can safely smooth out). Plus, at a macro level, a 6-inch ring flash is a monster and gives a great wrap around look.

While I don't have many images I'm super proud of just yet, I've got a few macro examples from when I was playing around with the thing a few days ago. I'd have more, but it has gotten really cold around here lately (60s during the day, high 30s or low 40s at night) and the bugs are harder to find. Soon though!

First up, the required bee shot. Not my best (especially because I had to be inches from the thing and it was moving enough to make me nervous). In this case, I left the motor drive on and let it take a shot without the flash afterwards to show you the difference.

(reversed Nikkor-H 50mm f/2,
1/250s, f/16, ISO 400, 1/2 power)

A few notable things. First, I'm overpowering sunlight, which was one of my goals from the beginning. The sunlight is probably two stops lower than the flash, but it still gives a nice highlight to the wings (note how the natural light image at right exhibits a bit of blur even at 1/250th!). While it takes about all the power my flash has, it is nice to know that I have the flexibility of not depending on the sun as my key light. It is still a bit tricky to find the right balance between shutter speed and flash power, mostly because of the blur at these levels.

Second, I can get the shot at f/16, which is a huge pleasure. I finally can stop struggling with the smaller depth of field that the larger apertures leave me with. Between the action-stopping power of the flash and the larger depth of field, I'm getting great sharpness from my $20 Nikkor-H. Not bad for something I made for free.

Ok, almost done. Next up, I have the lower portion of my fuschia (stamens and pistils). The real thing to note on this image is the staggering sharpness of the waterdrops in the upper left (too bad I focused slightly behind the flower) and the beautiful wrap-around light on the stamens).
(rev Nikkor-H 50mm, f/16, 1/125s, ISO 400, 1/2 power)

Finally, another nice thing about the ringflash is it lets me go mobile with higher magnification than 1:1. For instance, I slapped some extension tubes on the lens and tried to chase a few things around (ants move really fast at 2:1!). The subjects that moved slow enough were these baby snails, which are actually quite tiny. This image is almost the full frame!
(rev Nikkor-H 50mm, ~20mm extension tube, f/16, 1/125s, ISO 400, full power)


Conclusion:

Ok, hopefully by now you get what the macro ring flash adapter can do, and what it can't. Like many people hope, it isn't going to revolutionize your photography overnight, but for macro work (or a large enough ring at human-scale) it can really add a new look. Futhermore, the design is very handy; I slap it on the camera and it stays with me, leaving the camera very maneuverable (I used a little strip of scotch tape to hold it on). And if I don't want to use it, I'll turn it off and flip it out of the way with the tilt option on my Sunpak.

Yes, I'd love some more power, but for macro work, it has plenty of power (and isn't too powerful, as in the case of the bare flash at 1/16th power). Larger would be nicer too, but a larger flash will but more stress on the hot shoe and result in more light drop-off in the ring. As it is though, the paper is super light so I don't worry about hurting the flash or my 20D's shoe.

So, if you have some time, try to whip one up. Once I've spent more time with it, I might build another, more improved version. For now though, I'm quite happy and it will be just one more photography tool I keep around!

DIY Macro Ring Flash #2: Construction

Time for the fun part of the DIY Macro Ring Flash: building it. The introductory post gives all the details on the background and design.

Building Materials:

• X-ray film backing. We had a bunch of these laying around, but any cardboard could work (including cereal boxes). We got these years ago, but if you know someone who works at a hospital that hasn't gone completely digital, it'd be easy to get ahold of some. X-ray backing is nice because it is already white (I didn't want Captain Crunch on the side of the thing if I took it out and about) and the waxy finish should wear a bit better. Even with the wax, it glues very strongly with hot glue.
  
• Foil-backed tape. A reflector in a form much easier to use than standard aluminum foil. I had some lying around at work, but you can get it for a few bucks at places like home depot. Super useful if you like to build stuff for photography.
  
• Hot glue gun. To stick stuff together.
  
• Scotch tape. I used scotch tape for everything, especially taping light modifiers onto my flashes.
  
• Office paper. I used it as a diffuser, although it probably eats more light than alternative materials.
• Other household tools (scissors, knife, compass, ruler, pencil, etc).

My costs were $0, since I had everything around the house, but if I had to buy everything (excluding tools) it'd probably only cost $10. The main cost is time!


Construction Process:

While I had an idea of what I wanted to do, I mostly just made it up as I went along (being able to think in 3-D helps). As a result, I don't have any patterns for you, but if I do it again, I'll be sure to make a pattern. Of course, I tested as often as I could to make sure I wasn't making a mistake. Really, I just got really lucky that it all worked! All the process pictures below are clickable to see them larger.

The first step was the back wall of the modifier. I estimated the size of the ring and drew it using a compass. Then, I added the light channels (using a ruler) and left at least 1/4 inch of extra material around all the edges so I could make cut the tabs to glue it all together. Longer tabs (over an inch) act as the walls for the flash attachment. Of course, I didn't start taking pictures until after I built up some of the sides, so you don't get the pleasure of seeing the flat template.

The next step was to bend it into shape to test the fit (astonishingly perfect the first time!) and attach some of the walls, notably around the ring. Again, I just cut strips without measuring, cut tabs around the edges of the rings, and hot glued them on. The walls ended up being a little under an inch high. The hot glue works really well, at least for the X-ray film backing, but I imagine it'd work great on cereal box cardboard too. The main danger is burning your fingers, but you get used to it!

I made sure to include tabs in the triangle for the light splitter. In my opinion, splitting the light path is key to get relatively even coverage of the ring. Cutting it out was a bit tricky, not to mention gluing the wall later, but the hot glue and right angle structure of the cardboard makes the whole thing very strong and light.

Next, it was time for the front sheet. Using the back sheet as a template, I traced around it and cut out a front sheet, including tabs so I could glue it on to the walls. I left the side-walls long towards the flash attachment so I could cover the sides of the angle and left extra slack to get a nice curve at the angle too. At left, you can see the front sheet laid on top of the back sheet. For convenience, I tacked the front sheet to the back sheet with a few dots of glue, knowing I'd be able to pull it off later. The whole design and cutting process was surprisingly easy since you can measure every step of the way and nothing has to be super precise.

At right, you can see a lit side view (I slapped it on the camera and triggered it with an eBay radio trigger). Obviously, the downside of the X-ray backing is it leaks light in a bad way. That's ok though, since the foil-backed tape will both block light loss and guide it down the tube.

The business end of the flash is at left. Even with no foil and and no sides on the bend (leaking light like crazy) you can see it is passable as a ring light (although the bottom of the ring is very dark). At this point (after two hours of work) I had to wait until the next day to get the foil tape, so I shelved it and went to bed.


The next night, foil-backed tape freshly stolen from work and Amazing Race on the tube, I returned to construction.

The first step was to cover the inside of both the front and the back pieces with a layer of tape. I tried to be stingy, using as little tape as possible, but that ended up biting me later because there were some small light leaks. I recommend overlapping the tape by a millimeter, because it can pull apart slightly when the thing flexes (and it is easy to misjudge and end up a little short). The process was really easy though, since bubbles and wrinkles will not hurt your results much.

I purposely did not go all the way down the ring with the foil, since I thought it would be likely I'd want a diffuse reflector at the end to guide light out. So I glued it all together and started testing. The image at left shows the ring in action (and a light leak in the upper left that I later fixed). Note how the foiled part has much brighter hot spots but actually emits less light than the paper area. The downside is that it provides relatively uneven lighting, so a diffuser is definitely necessary.

The next step was to lay office paper on top of the ring and test again (not shown, but very similar to the final version below). The lack of foil on the bottom definitely prevented the bottom of the ring from getting enough light, so I went ahead and added foil to everything, knowing I could always go back in later and add more reflectors or diffusers. Then, I cut out a diffuser (using the same tabbing technique) and taped it on using scotch tape.

The final result gives pretty even illumination. The image at right has had no editing (you'll see my lack of quality control in cutting and taping if you view the larger version). While there are hotspots in the upper right and upper left (the ends of the light tubes) the overall ring is pretty evenly lit. The hotspots are less than a stop brighter than the darkest areas which is pretty darn good for something I built out of free materials in a couple of nights. My theory is the paper acts both as a diffuser and reflector, spreading the light evenly around the ring. Splitting the light path helps a lot too to avoid a single super hot spot at the very top, and channeling light down the ring.




Finished Result and a Few Comments:

I've got to say, the result was way more successful than I expected for the minimal time and materials I put into it (total time in construction was maybe 4 hours, but I was watching TV at the time too). Hot glue holds the cardboard very strongly and the whole thing is very sturdy (although I wouldn't let it float around in an equipment bag without more protection). The diffusion technique works quite well for the size of the ring too.

If I were to build it again, I wouldn't do much differently. The only thing I'd really want to change is reducing the sharpness of the inside angle at the main bend -- I think I lose a decent amount of light there. It might be nice to experiment with the diameter, width, and depth of the ring too. As shown above, it just barely fits around my Tamron 17-50mm F/2.8 which is a happy accident (my goal was just to get it around my Nikkor 50mm F/2).

Next post, I'll provide plenty of example images, describe the light loss from it, and talk about how I will (and when I won't) use it in the future.

DIY Macro Ring Flash #1: Introduction

Ok, let me start by saying I'm not nearly as original as I thought I was.

I conceived of this project about a month ago, 'designed' and built it less than a week ago, but only today did I realize how many other people thought the same thing. But that's ok; as my most ambitious DIY photography project to date (meaning it took me about 4 hours of work while catching up on reality shows on my PVR), I'm going to post it anyway!

I'm hoping that this will be useful to some of you out there. The info will be broken into multiple parts which I'll try to post in the next week (linked as I get them done):

1. The Introduction, Research, and Design (you are here)
2. Construction
3. Real-World Usage

What's My Motivation?

I use my reversed Nikkor 50mm F/2 a lot for macro shots, but getting enough light on the sensor is always a problem. It really clicked for me after the spider shoot though: to get good macros I really needed to use flash.

Of course, I'm a cheap bastard, so buying a commercial ringflash (for $150+) was out of the question. Hell, I'm not even using a real macro lens yet, I'm not ready to shell out that kind of cash. So why not make my own?

My goal was to design and build a macro ring flash for minimal money that would let me shoot bugs, flowers, and animals handheld. Turns out, it cost me nothing, because I already had everything I needed.

My concept was simple: a Sunpak Super 383 Flash on camera with paper/cardboard/foil/whatever I could find to route the light down to a ring around the lens. The Sunpak is so powerful, even if I lost 90% of my light I'd still have enough oomph to light objects inches away from my lens. So I went through a mental design process in my head, jotted some things down last Saturday during proctoring (the sketch page is at right), and started construction that night. The result is the contraption at the top of this entry, without the light leaks (I chose that image because it looks cool and really illustrates how it was built and how it works.


Design

The design is super simple. With the flash facing forward, use a light tube to guide the light forward, then down to the ring around the flash. Use something shiny (like foil-backed tape) to help guide the light and reduce light loss, then spread the light evenly around the ring and place a diffuser in front of that to avoid hotspots. Sizewise, I wanted it to be as small and light as possible while still giving ring width of at least a 1/2 inch.

The advantage of this design is that it slips right on the flash, can be flipped up out of the way if needed (using the tilt motion of the Sunpak), and is light enough to be held by the hot shoe.

The real design difficulty was how to spread the light around the ring evenly and I pondered this many a night before I fell asleep. One requirement was to split the light path to come at the ring from two different directions and avoid a hot spot at the join. In the sketches above you can see I spent some time thinking about it, and I decided on the setup in the upper right with light paths joining the ring tangent to the circle. This prevented the flash from coming out too far but forced enough light down the ring to get even illumination (I hoped).

I also considered double diffusion using a variable width channel down the ring but figured that'd eat too much light and pose nasty construction problems.

And that was the sum total of my design. After making a few sketches, I decided to just build it and see where the problems were; I didn't expect it to work as well as it does right out of the gate. The sad part is I didn't even see that other people had used the same design until just today.


Those Who Came Before

I knew that others had completed single reflector ring flash adapters before, most notably Dennison Bertram (Strobist reference here, legendary picture of model Lenka here) and Jayhan. But, I thought I could bring some originality to the table by placing the modifier on the camera-mounted flash and splitting the light path to get more even illumination.

Turns out I was wrong.

Right before I started this post I looked again at the Strobist: Ring Flash Week: Intro and Resources (for the record, I was planning this project before Hobby posted his design -- gotta love his monster ringflash though). His follow up posts are here, here, here, and here. All are worth the read.

Apparently I got confused by the structure of the introduction post though and I never read the part below the toothy idiot. You know, the part about a Flickr thread soliciting ideas for a ringflash light modifier! To be built by a known company and undercut this commercial flash modifier (which is pretty much what I designed). And the thread includes ibanezrocker's design which is made using similar materials and Jay_in_Frederick's design which has the split light guides.

So apparently I'm not original.

Well, at least I came up with my ideas independently (or who knows, maybe I did read some of these things and then I forgot I had and tried to take the ideas for myself).


Either way, in the next post, I'll explain how to build a light, sturdy macro ring flash adapter for free (well, maybe not free, but I had everything I needed on hand). Last I checked, free is better than anything you have to pay for.

Oh, and to whet your appetite, I'll drop one of my test pictures below. Shouldn't be too hard for you to figure out what the object is. Hint: how do you think I watched the Amazing Race while I was building the thing?

Canon 20D, Reversed 50mm F/2, 1/160s, F/16, ISO 100
Sunpak on 1/4(?) power

Anatomy of a Photo: The Failure of a Snail

This post has been hugely delayed, mostly because I haven't taken the time to write it up.

Sometimes it is our failures that remind us how far we've come instead of our successes.

The following shoot shows one such failure. I was trying to shoot for the DPC Distance challenge and I had the idea to show a snail with a long way to go. I knew I had a ton of snails in the yard (because I see their slime trails every morning) so that part was easy. To give the idea of distance, I decided to use a wide angle and a diagonal crack leading off into the distance to highlight the idea of distance. But, even though I got the image I was looking for, it wasn't good enough and I actually identified that before I submitted, a first for me. Normally, I'd submit it anyway and then experience the shock and awe when it tanked.

First, the setup. I found a nice crack leading into a flowerbed (the snail Shangri-La). I wanted to highlight the snail with a spot of flash overpowering the sun by a stop or two, so I set up my Sunpak 383 snooted with printer paper (a piece of paper, scissors, and tape are pretty much all you need for light modification in 90% of cases). The blanket is from the picnic I had with my daughter earlier (so I didn't need to lay down on the bare concrete to get my low angle) and the item propping up the light is a toy piano bench (I just grabbed what was handy). Oh, and the orange spot is my discarded shirt (don't ask why I have an orange shirt because it makes me look like a corpse).

To get the angle and lighting right I used a grape sprig (again, left over from the picnic) as a stand in. I'd rather dry some grapes than make a raisin out of a snail unnecessarily.

The next ingredient: a snail, with a bit of water to keep him moving. Snails make pretty easy subjects; even when they run you don't have to move your setup very fast. Aside: turns out the common garden snails found all over California are actually French escargot snails -- some idiot introduced them to the area in the 1850's so he could have the slimy delicacy and they took over the place. More info (including cooking tips!) here at SFGate.


With a little bit of snail herding (and coaxing him out of his shell) he gave me the shot I desired: crawling along the crack towards the distance (34mm, F/18, 1/200s, ISO100). I shot a bunch from slightly different angles, packed up (since I was short on time and new I wasn't going to do another take) and loaded the images on the computer.

And that was when I realized the shot wasn't going to work. I tried all the ways I could think of, but with Basic Editing I couldn't get the separation between the snail and the background. Turns out the concrete has the same yellow/green/brown flecks that the snail has so I couldn't get separation based on color. Desaturating (see opening image) didn't help either because the snail blended right in with the background (darn camouflage).

Even if the snail was brought out correctly (a snooted, hard light from behind the snail to camera right would have done the trick nicely) the goal of the snail wasn't obvious at all because nothing stood out in the background (other than that flash in the upper right). But a bush with a third light on it (or in it!) would look pretty nice.

The point is, I failed in execution, but it was a big deal because I could identify why I failed BEFORE I submitted. Not only that, but brainstorming fixes was very educational!

Anatomy of a Photo: Garden Spider

It seems like I've always got posts brewing, but by the time I make some time to write a post up, it's a week later than my last post. Oh well, I guess you can expect posts about once a week now :) That being said, I have a few DPC challenge related posts and a ringlight post in various stages of the pipeline, so there's always hope.

This post is another in my Anatomy of a Photo series, which I haven't updated for 4(!) months. Yikes, almost as scary as a spider up close.

First, some background. A few weeks ago I noticed a rather large Garden Spider (Araneus diadematus, also known as a Cross Spider, cool pic here) in a plant right outside my back door. Compared to the normal daddy long legs I see around the house, garden spiders look so cool and she has a nice three-foot web that she maintains daily (I'm not really sure of the sex, so I'll say she in deference to Charlotte's Web). I took photos a few different days, and decided that I wanted to enter a picture of her in a DPC challenge. My opportunity came in the Macro VI challenge. The image I finally settled on was:


And it got a 5.75, good for 100th of 247 images in the contest. At first, I was disappointed (especially when it started the first day around a 5.2) but I'm beginning to understand why it did poorly. For one thing, there were a ton of spiders in the contest, and it didn't get much for originality. It also has some focus issues (mostly due to depth of field, more on that later) and the really cool part of the spider (the head) is really tiny.

What got me really excited about the image was the level of detail I was able to achieve with my lowly reversed Nikkor-H 50mm F/2. I was starting to get a little discouraged with the fuzziness of the images at 100% crops (not horrible, but nothing compared to my other lenses). But these came out really sharp, probably because of the flash. I still think the Nikkor-H has some problems with highlights (they seem to bleed to adjacent pixels more than they should) but that is likely because of the coatings, or lack of them, and the fact that the lens is reversed.

To give you an idea of detail, below is a 100% crop (click to see it full-size). For this image, I did apply USM to sharpen it further, but you get the idea of the quality. Realistically, you can get a super sharp image if you do a 50% crop (downsample by 50%). And seeing a spider at high res is really cool (see the 1024x807 image on Flickr).


Of course, this is an photo anatomy post, so I should describe what went into the image.

First, since I neglected to get a setup shot (oops) but I'll describe it for you. Start with a very large flowering plant (I don't know the type) with the spider's web running north-south oriented vertically. She liked to hide in a dead flower on the north side, but I often caught her in the middle of the web during or after she has caught something to eat. I did shoot the spider when she was hiding, but she has good camoflage and is hard to see, even at a 1:1 macro. So I waited until she was in the middle of the web and the sun was hitting her (around noon, camera to the west of the web, sun at upper camera right).

For some reason, she always walked on the web with her body on the west side of the web and almost always upside down! Not great for photos, especially with the position of the sun. On the day I got the picture, I saw her in the middle of the web and grabbed the camera but the lighting was horrible because her head was in shadow. Back inside to grab the flash and light-stand. I taped a diffuser (scrap of white copy paper) on the business end of my Sunpak 383 and set it up to camera lower right. Since she was always upside down, I quickly dialed in an exposure with the flash as the primary and the sun a few stops darker than the proper exposure, to get the background to drop and just give highlights and separation from the sun. This was about 1/200 seconds, ISO 400, and F/16 on the Nikkor-H (I handheld the camera since the flash stopped motion well).

Here's the result when I was shooting pretty much straight on:

I liked the image, but I couldn't get the back and the head in focus at the same time because my depth of field was less than a millimeter. So I decided to shoot upwards (rather difficult, actually, because I kept bumping the plant trying to get in there) and got something like this:


Again, I like this, although the slow shutter speed caused the ambient exposure to blur, so I kept taking shots until I got the one I liked. I really liked the diagonal tilt in the submitted photo, but I'm not wild about the background colors (darn sky!) and lack of focus on the legs. There's also a really nasty highlight on the back, which I burned a bit, but it still was distracting.

If I could do it again (and I might) I'd use two flashes to crosslight the spider and mix in some ambient too (but smaller levels). I guarantee there's another, more unique view in there too, but the plant makes it difficult to maneuver. Sadly, I don't have the heart to actually take her off her web and put her in a more controlled environment. Sad, but she's been out there at least a month, and I don't feel right about it.