I'm confused. Looking at the images, it appears to me that you have a lot of light on the front, not so much elsewhere. I can understand how that could be due to inverse square law if the light source were small and close, but then the solution I'm imagining would be to use a larger diffuser so that the subject could be surrounded by a uniform sphere of light (except for the inevitable "black hole" of the lens aperture). I don't understand how using a smaller diffuser is going to help, unless you're looking to increase the distance between the outer and inner layers of your diffusion system.Beatsy wrote:I think I need a smaller ping-pong ball (or equivalent) to get the exact lighting I'm after. Struggling to apply much light from the front with the shorter working distance of 20x and 50x mitties. Something around 15mm diameter should help that too. That blimmin' inverse square law plays havoc with blown highlights when you're using such small subjects.
Can you explain in more detail how you're thinking about this?
--Rik