Reflective, bounced, lighting

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NikonUser
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Reflective, bounced, lighting

Post by NikonUser »

EDIT: title was "A new lighting method? Maybe or maybe not!"
In a recent response to an old post here:
http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... hp?t=17038
(last comment), Lothar described a lighting technique that I do not recall ever seeing here on PMG.net.

Light source is placed below the subject and the light is reflected back from above the subject.

I tried a somewhat modified version of his method with a very metallic Muscid fly as a subject (fly is over 4 years old!).

It gave me a uniformly lit fly with minimum reflections - large reflections common on such a fly when I use a flash from above.

Fly image is full frame from a Nikon D610 (still plagued by oil spots); ZS UDR, no processing except for size reduction.

A: styrofoam fast-food tray, 9x9 inches
B: Xmas wrapping foil with highly reflective inner surface
C: lens shade on reversed 50mm El Nikkor
D: Nikon SB-R200 flashes pointing at A; wireless remote controlled by camera.
E: base resting on microscope stage
F: fly on pin on goniometer G

Very little, if any, light from the flashes directly hits the fly. The long working distance of the El Nikkor allows for this simple method.
Image
Image
Last edited by NikonUser on Sun Dec 07, 2014 6:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
NU.
student of entomology
Quote – Holmes on ‘Entomology’
” I suppose you are an entomologist ? “
” Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should like to put my eyes on the individual entitled to that name.
No man can be truly called an entomologist,
sir; the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr
The Poet at the Breakfast Table.

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Chris S.
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Post by Chris S. »

NU,

The approach has been discussed before, but the links are obscure, and this is a lighting approach that deserves more attention. When I talk with beginners, I often suggest it as the first lighting regime they try. And it likely belongs in almost everybody's bag of tricks. Yet it's not easy to learn about at our forum.

The key insight, I think, is that it's often easier to give light a pleasing, even spread by bouncing it, than by shining it through a diffuser. While NU is here using a polystyrene tray for a bounce panel, I often arch a piece of paper around the subject. Sam Droege has documented bouncing light around the inside of a white polystyrene cooler. Tony Gutierrez demonstrated using a polystyrene coffee cup. Lothar is using a sphere he made with a 3D printer. What all these have in common is that the light source does not hit the subject directly (it is blocked or aimed so as to entirely miss the subject). One or two light sources are aimed at the white surface, and bounce in scattered fashion on the subject.

Here is Tony Gutierrez' (tonygt19) coffee cup setup. (Graham46, who started the thread, was an intern in Tony's lab.)

Here is a pdf showing Sam Droege's use of a white cooler.

NU, thanks for demonstrating an approach that deserves more notice.

Cheers,

--Chris

ChrisR
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Post by ChrisR »

Something similar, which does got mentioned every so often, - :Lieberkühn reflectors
and there's a shiny parabolic mirror at
http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... 531c004dad

One variation is the reflectivity of the reflector. Some are white, some mirror-like, and some (Olympus?) a satin aluminium. The shinier ones being made to focus on the subject.

Recently I saw an LED ring-light, just below and around the subject, being used as the light source, bounced off the reflector. The reflectors were silver or white lined coffee jar lids, paper plates, etc.
The black vertical lines are to suggest a method of stopping the light hitting the optics directly. Leds shown yellow for illustration:
Image
The "rim" lighting version (left) was effective for water-borne samples, avoiding light bouncing directly off the water surface into the lens.

NikonUser
Posts: 2693
Joined: Thu Sep 04, 2008 2:03 am
Location: southern New Brunswick, Canada

Post by NikonUser »

Thanks guys, very useful comments. Now the references to this method are in one place I have changed the title to hopefully make it easier to find.
NU.
student of entomology
Quote – Holmes on ‘Entomology’
” I suppose you are an entomologist ? “
” Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should like to put my eyes on the individual entitled to that name.
No man can be truly called an entomologist,
sir; the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr
The Poet at the Breakfast Table.

Nikon camera, lenses and objectives
Olympus microscope and objectives

Chris S.
Site Admin
Posts: 4042
Joined: Sun Apr 05, 2009 9:55 pm
Location: Ohio, USA

Post by Chris S. »

Nicely done, NU. We needed this thread. :smt023

--Chris

Marci Hess
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Post by Marci Hess »

More good info! Thanks!!

GemBro
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Location: Surrey [UK]

Post by GemBro »

Great info here ...

The PDF of Sam's ... I knew I'd seen that white cooler setup before ...

Sam Droege - How to take Hi-Res Macro Studio Photos of Insects and Plants:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-_yvIsucOY
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AndrewC
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Post by AndrewC »

From a few years ago :)

http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... +reflector

Not that I have enough time to work on it nowadays but I think the "best" solution has to be a hemispherical diffuser, or diffuse reflector, to mimic the sky. So either:

1) Reflector: a large polystyrene shell hemisphere over the subject with light source underneath (just search ebay for hollow polystyrene ball, you can get them up to 30cm diameter). This is basically just the coffee cup reflector taken a bit further.

2) clear (or translucent) bowl possibly covered with a layer of filter floss for extra diffusion and shoot a studio flash through it (basically just a light tent). The advantage of the diffuser is you can lay coloured tissue paper over it to alter the light. Just don't set fire to it ! Good source for the bowl is food storage products - or large plastic bottles such as milk jugs or screenwash you can chop up.

IMHO you get 99% of the benefit from just having a large light source and any kind of diffuser (kitchen towel, cloth, tissue) somewhere in the light path and a bunch of reflective surfaces. Downside is that if you've had fun creating goniometric stages and fancy xyz translators it is hard to fit them in the reflector/diffuser. Unless of course you happen to work in an MEMS research lab and can rustle up some microtranslators / rotators.

You can have hours of Blue Peter moments with used polystyrene trays, pots, etc.

For the actual light source - I think an Einstein studio strobe has to be a good off the shelf item for speed and power. http://www.paulcbuff.com/e640.php Or you can experiment with overdriven hi power LEDs but with those you are playing with high current/voltage pulses which can be damaging to you and your equipment.
rgds, Andrew

"Is that an accurate dictionary ? Charlie Eppes

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