Ralph the Roach
Photo of a Roach
Photo of a Roach
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Sep, 2017Views
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dantaylor_3680
December 03, 2020
Great shot. I see every pc of dust and dirt on Mr Ralph the Roach. I need to do more macro pics.
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken on a rainy day in my homeTime
It was taken in the afternoon.Lighting
The lighting was comprised of two small flashes both set on manual at a very low power. The light was bounced off a white reflector. The key here is to eliminate reflections as much as possible. These bugs are very reflective and the lighting takes some experimentation to get right. Notice how I said two small flashes. Let me explain, when you shoot stacks of images you get better consistency using smaller flashes at reduced power. This may sound like nonsense but it is not. Take a large Canon flash, a Vivitar 283 or 85 or studio flashes and shoot 500 images and look at the results. If they all match do it again. The probability is that a hand full will be off a stop or more. Now do it with a little two battery guide number 20-30 flash and compare. The small power flash will be more consistent. It has nothing to do with a full charge either. If you don't believe me fine, do it. After you take 6 - 7 thousand shots and have 2 or three stacks to work with you will remember this. I would say I wasted 20-30K clicks before I realized this.Equipment
This was shot with a Canon 5D MK II. I am not sure of the lens as I use a few different ones when shooting at about 1:1 and that is what this looks like. For 1:1 magnification I use a Canon 100mm L, a Canon MPE-65, a Nikon 50mm enlarger lens (the newer sharper plastic body one) or a Pentax 100mm Bellows lens there is little difference in quality when shooting stacks. Since this was shot at about 1:1 magnification I would say it is a stack of 40-50 shots. The lighting was a pair of Canon 270 EX II flashes. The stacking was done by a StackShot. Stacking can also be done manually or with focusing rail. You don't have to have a StackShot or something similar for photos like this. At 1:1 magnification you can move the camera manually non a rail without to much difficulty. The easy affordable way is to use an old high quality bellows with an enlarger lens. The movement on old Nikon, Canon, Minolta, Pentax etc bellows are as if not more precise than most of your current focusing rails. When stacking it is a matter of computing the magnification and aperture size to compute the travel distance. You do this once and save the information. This is where the Stackshot shines as you program it based on magnification. What you program is the travel distance based on the best sharpness and overlap for that magnification. So, when it is 1:1 you call up the settings for 1:1 and you set the start and stop position and it then calculates the distance between the shots and takes them.Inspiration
It was a rainy day and I was boredEditing
Yes, the images were shot in RAW and then sharpened and a little exposure was added (about a 1/2 a stop) in Canons DPP. They were exported as tiff images and imported into Helicon. I may have used Zerene Stacker for the stacking. I have had good luck with both. Some stacks seem to work better with Helicon and some with Zerene. They both do an excellent job. Once stacked they were edited in LightRoom. The LightRoom processing is really just a little touch up and cropping for the media. When looking back there are a couple of spots of dust on the top I should have used the clone tool to remove.In my camera bag
This does not relate to this photo.Feedback
This is a super fun thing to do on a rainy day; however, you need the equipment to do it so you need to plan for it in advance. You don't need to break the bank by purchasing a StackShot, a Dual Headed Macro Flash and a Canon MPE-65 lens to get a great shot. As mentioned you can use an enlarger lens, (around $50 -$75 used) and a high quality used bellows (another $50 - $150). Don't waste your money on a new Chinese bellows as they are junk and a new Novoflex bellows is very expensive - around 1K. You will need adapters for the bellows to the camera and any flash will do. Or you could reverse a lens and get a focusing rail. However, I think the bellows would be a better choice for this but a reversed lens has other uses - but that is just an opinion.
