How about lighting?

Have questions about the equipment used for macro- or micro- photography? Post those questions in this forum.

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Ella29
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Joined: Fri Jan 19, 2018 4:00 am
Location: USA, Michigan

How about lighting?

Post by Ella29 »

Hello everyone, I'm new here.
I ask advice from the grandfathers of this craft.

Do you think it's permissible to use ring flashes in evening shoots? I want to buy such tool, but I do not know what exactly I need, if more often than not I am engaged in portrait photography, I prefer the studio one. I found an article that describes in detail what features to compare choosing ring lights?. For example, fluorescent lamps provide a minor green shade whereas LED lamps add a bit of pink one. I want to make sure that I made the right choice. Which are better at work and more often used?

ChrisR
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Post by ChrisR »

Hi Ella. This forum is really only about macro photography, for portraiture there are plenty of better forums.
Ring lights aren't used much in close-up or macro photography, unless you want a really flat light, with any reflective surfaces likely to show small images of the ring.
Chris R

ray_parkhurst
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Post by ray_parkhurst »

Hi Ella...you may have heard advice from folks that "ringlights are great for macro" or something similar, but the general advice you'll get from this forum (as Chris R says) is that ringlights are not actually the best lighting method for macro. It's true that ringlights provide very broad coverage that minimizes shadows, but that creates an "unnatural" look. A better approach is to use two individual lights that are diffused to make them look "bigger" and thus minimize hotspots. There are many options to achieve this.

Jan Steinman
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Re: How about lighting?

Post by Jan Steinman »

I would not consider fluorescent or LED. Get a strobe ring flash.

There are numerous third-party ones intended for macro. They come from China, and are pretty cheap. Find them on evilBay.

There are big, powerful expensive ones that are used for studio photography. I think the best for portraiture would be the Profoto line, as you can get a special reflector that makes the light source much bigger, in other words, lower contrast. These will be $500 up for used ones, without the power pack.

Ring flash gets a bad rap for macro because it is typically high-contrast light, being a physically small light source. I realize I'm an outlier on this forum, but I'm a big fan of ring flash for macro, but only ones that can be extended via reflectors or diffusers so that they produce low-contrast light.

Here is an example of a conversion of my most beloved ring flash (Olympus T-8, for the OM 35mm film system cameras) so that it will do TTL flash control on modern digital cameras: https://www.mu-43.com/threads/converted ... st-1026296
:::: Jan Steinman ::::

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