Denis,
About Electronic First Shutter Curtain (EFSC): There are two important sources of vibration involved in actuating a DSLR’s mirror and shutter. The larger source is mirror slap, the effect of which you’ve eliminated by shooting in mirror-up mode and then waiting for mirror slap to dissipate. The smaller—but still vital—vibration source is shutter slap (called “shutter shock” by some). This can be a big problem, a huge softener of images. Canon provides an answer to this—which apparently works well in some Canon bodies, but poorly in others—in the form of EFSC. The idea is that in EFSC mode, the shutter goes up, a bit of time passes, during which shutter-induced-vibration dissipates—and only after this does the sensor begin electronically recording the image.
In a seminal post a few years ago, Charlie Krebs convincingly demonstrated that EFSC made a big difference in image sharpness under certain conditions. Charlie’s findings have been widely replicated and expanded on by other photographers. Unfortunately, Canon has not implemented EFSC will full efficacy in all its camera bodies. Nikon is far worse, implementing EFCS (same concept, but with idiotically different abbreviation) much later, more poorly, and only in a few premium bodies. Anyway, if your camera body supports EFSC, you should try using it.
And yes, 1/100 second is a slow enough exposure that EFCS might make things sharper. It is not a fast enough exposure to freeze out shutter-induced vibration.
Clintonwake wrote:Yes the small ikea lights are warmish on the yellowish side. They are placed on the side of the tunnel diffuser and the flash is directly above the tunnel where the subject is.
I strongly suggest that you restrict your shooting lights to either LED or flash, not both. It’s fine to use LED as a focusing light and flash as a shooting light, so long as one—only one—of these light sources contributes to actual exposure. Continuous lights such as LEDs have both positives (WYSIWYG, lack of flash-induced movement), and negatives (fuzziness if vibration is present). Flash also has both positives (possible elimination of vibration), and negatives (not WYSISYG, can induce subject vibration). In the field, it’s sometimes useful to combine sunlight (continuous) with flash (very brief)—but this is an expert skill, and something to be avoided at all costs in the macro studio.
Clintonwake wrote:The flash is hanging from above so hopefully should not cause vibration and also the speed of 1/100 I thought would help with minute vibrations, perhaps not.
Sorry to differ from your quite-sensible viewpoint, but flash-induced vibration is an interest of mine, so I’ve done fair amount of experimentation on the subject. Per my (unpublished) data, the main issue is not mechanical shock emanating from the flash unit. Rather, it is the rapid, visible-spectrum illumination of the subject, which creates a nearly-instantaneous infrared fluorescence by the subject, which almost instantly heats adjacent air, which “kicks” the subject violently and randomly.
If one considers carefully the above observations—and has no disagreement with them—then there is no way to sharply image certain subjects, such as butterfly scales, with flash. Once I figured this out, I gave up on flash for most subjects, and have since worked almost entirely with continuous light.
Cheers,
--Chris S.
