The reality of course, is that this is often not an option for us mere mortals. We do not have the flexibility to get up at the wee hours of the morning and trek to a good spot that we scoped out the day before and stay there for several hours getting good shots.  If we did this, our families would kill us.

Therefore much of the light we get to shoot in is of the worst kind.  It occurs when the sun is high above during the mid day.  The other reality is that you may find that the sky is cloudy and ugly on that particular day.  However, this does not necessarily mean that all hope is lost.  There are a number of options available to you and in this post, as well as future ones, I will go over these in more detail.

First, there are some things that you can do to get that ideal morning or late afternoon light without dragging your family out of bed.  This is possible through prior planning.  If you make sure that your hotel is located near some interesting sites, you can wake up early in the morning to photograph them and return to join your family for breakfast.

For instance, on a recent trip to Turkey I made sure to stay in the Sultanahment area – which contains the Blue Mosque and the Haghia Sofia – along with a host of other interesting places.  This enabled me to get out and shoot some photos in the morning.  I would wake up around six in the morning, shoot for a bit, then join my family for breakfast.  It also enabled me to get some shots of these crowded places with fewer people in the shots.  My wife loved this solution as she appreciated sleeping in a bit and when we did get out I didn’t stop every few minutes to take a picture.

However, this does not work well for day trips – when you are seeing locations further from your hotel.  In these cases, you almost always wind up seeing the site during the middle of the day.

You will of course not get dramatic sunrise or sunset lighting during this time, but a blue sky is better than a blown out sky.  There are several options that I make use of during these times.

The easiest option is to simply pay attention to the light.  For example, most of the time if you are facing horrible light, if you turn around you will find the lighting much better.  Always avoid shooting towards the sun.  This sounds very simple, but you would be surprised how many times you’ll find yourself doing it.

There will be times though, when you simply cannot get behind your subject or your prefer the viewpoint that looks almost right into the sun.  In this case, you will have to contend with the wide dynamic range.  Of course, you don’t always have to get all of the dynamic range in there.  I am a sucker for silhouette shots, though many others don’t like them.

Another option is to take an HDR shot.  This is particularly useful inside dark buildings where the outside is very bright.  Of course, you may not like the effect, but in many cases this is the best way to get the closest to the full dynamic range.

Even in this shot, the dynamic range was too much to get the outside behind the door correctly exposed.  However, it did improve the gleaming light on the floors and in the windows above.  As tripods and monopods are often not allowed, I shoot these HDR shots handheld using exposure bracketing.  Unfortunately, Canon is still brain dead in this area and only allows three shots on all but the 1D series cameras.  To compensate for this, I set the bracketing to every two stops and shoot in RAW.

The other option, which also works for cloudy days when even exposed sky will be white, is to add the sky in post processing.  This is quite easy to do, though it takes some time to get it perfect.  The following is a shot taken during a cloudy day.

The following is the same shot with a bit of editing.  It is still a bit raw, but gives the basic idea.

To do this, I took the shot above and another shot with a better sky and did the following.

1) Copied the shot above as a new layer on the one with the sky.

2) Selected the white sky using the magic selector.

3) Deleted the bad sky – replacing it with the better one.

4) Burned the building a bit in order to make it look a bit more natural.

I do not advocate using this as an escape, but there are times when the scene is very interesting and the weather just refuses to cooperate.  A true pro would stay in a location for a good period of time and wait for the right weather, but the rest of us need to deal with what we are given.

This certainly is not an exhaustive list of what is possible, but I hope it has illustrated that it is still possible to get good shots without waking the family at 4 AM every morning and trekking them to the same spots to get the best light.

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Still, events I find quite different.  The pictures serve a higher purpose than just “look at me” and are a way for those in the picture to remember events for years later.  Therefore, when asked I often bring my camera to these events.  Still, I had never been asked to bring my camera to a wedding.

Recently, some friends of ours who were not able to hire a professional wedding photographer asked if I could take pictures.  I obliged and tried to do the best job possible.  In the process, I think some things worked well and some things not so well.  Here are several of the shots (note: I did not do any post processing).

Of course, the biggest mistake in these shots is the white balance.  In a number of shots the dress is a tinge of yellow – which most professional wedding photographers would cringe at.  There are two things I should have done to improve this – use gels and shoot in RAW.

I almost always shoot in RAW, but for this occasion did not relish the time it would take to fix the white balance and convert them to jpeg.  Given that I was doing this for free and do not intend to get into the wedding photography business, I decided to shoot in jpeg.  The bride and groom did not notice the mistake and loved the pictures, so things worked out.

I did not do any posed shots before the wedding.  I only took shots of the wedding process.  Had I needed to shoot some poses things would have gotten dicier as I am not familiar with the standard poses.

In terms of lenses, I took almost everything I had – including a 24-70 2.8L that I borrowed from a friend.  As I had only a single body (a Canon 5D Mark II), I figured out just before the wedding that realistically I could use only one lens.  Therefore I chose to use my 70-200 4L IS – which turned out to be a good choice.  The focal length was perfect as I had to remain behind a row of video cameras and I generally prefer the close in shots.  As I am already very familiar with this lens, I worried about using a lens that I was not as familiar with.

To be honest, I put the 24-70 on the camera a few times and just did not find that focal length very useful.  Perhaps in larger weddings where I need to get many people in the shot it would be more helpful, but unless I have a second body I do not see myself using it much.  Before this wedding it was not on my list of lenses to buy, and it remained so after the wedding.

I kept the 5D Mark II in ISO 3200 during a good portion of the wedding.  I also used a 580EX II on the camera with a small softbox diffuser on it.  In general I am happy with the lighting.  Several of the pictures are a bit on the darker side but it would not be hard to increase it.  Because of this, I’m not sure I would use a 70-200/2.8 IS instead of the F4.  The thing I love about the F4 is its portability and how light it is.  The 2.8 is a much heavier lens and the image stabilization is not as good as in the F4.  Also, I found F4 to be a good aperture for a good number of the shots – 2.8 would have been too thin in many situations.

Of course, if I had needed to shoot portraits before the wedding, my equipment would not have matched up very well.  I do have remote triggers and two flashes, but I own only one umbrella.  I also lack a good portraits lens such as the 85/1.2 or the 135/2.  However, I have no plans to get into that business anyway.

Overall I think it was nice to get out of my comfort zone.  The bride and groom were happy with the shots and I learned a bit for next time.  Perhaps once I have Lightroom I will be more willing to use RAW in these occasions and I now have some filters for my flashes.

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• Not correcting for verticals
• Blown out areas from the flash
• Shadows
• Some parts of the photos were too dark

I had a number of theories on how to fix these issues, but for the lighting my idea was to purchase an Alienbees light and an extra Pocketwizard MultiMAX and use it as a third light.  One of my coworkers offered to stop by the house with a lot of the equipment that I am looking to buy someday so I was able to get a good look at what it can accomplish and whether it will solve some of my problems.

One note before I show these shots.  When we took these photos, we were mainly trying to see what the lights and lenses were capable of and what issues we may have.  We did not correct for verticals and I did not Photoshop any of these pictures.  In this way you can get a good idea what the equipment did without seeing what it looks like after Photoshop.

This shot was taken with the Canon 14mm 2.8 (the first version, not the II) and an Alienbees AB1600 with a 60″ x 30″ softbox behind me.  You can actually see the softbox quite well in the window.  In the adjoining bathroom, I placed a 580EX II aimed at the ceiling towards the end of the bathroom.

I noticed the following about the Alienbees light and the soft box, both from shooting at the property and from chatting with its owner.

• I definitely need to get one of these
• The 1600 works quite well here.  We did tone it down on most shots – around 1/16th at ISO 400.  The softbox also diffuses it quite a bit and it comes with a second diffuser that can slow it down another stop.
• I had been debating between a regular light vs their ring light with the moon light.  I believe for real estate the soft box works better, as it fits well to many of the doorways.  Behind me was a walk in closet and we placed the softbox squarely in the doorway.
• When I do buy it, I plan to pick up a Vagabond II for remote power.  We just plugged it in, but I think having a portable power source would be a lot more convenient.

By the way, I found a handy way of getting rid of the reflection of the softbox in the window.

Basically, I placed a 6’5″ gobo in front of the softbox – a bit to the side.  We didn’t move the softbox at all from the previous shot.  In simpler words, I stood in front of it and blocked the reflection.  It darkened that side of the shot a bit, but nothing that isn’t easily fixable in Photoshop.

Here’s a shot we did of the kitchen.

This was also shot with the two lights.  I had my 580EX in the part of the kitchen that is not visible.  There are a bit of shadows on the right side, but with another strobe that may be fixable.

I did run into some issues with my 580EX II.  I suspect that it has problems with its miniport.  I replaced it with a 580EX with a hot shoe cord to connect it with the Pocketwizard and that worked fine, so I may wind up triggering the 580EX II the same way I trigger the 580EX.

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Of course, I actually had the ‘opportunity’ to shoot this house twice, as my original pictures taken at night turned out so bad that I needed to reshoot.  The following is what I learned from this shoot.

First, am slowly starting to get the hang of multiple lights.  I currently shoot with a 580EX and a 580EX II triggered by Pocketwizard MultiMAXes.  I detest most of the HDR real estate shots I have seen and I prefer the more natural look provided by this method.  However, as you can see from the shot below, I still need to work on my technique quite a bit.  The shot below has serious problems with the lighting.

This time at least, I did get quicker at positioning the lights and setting the power on them.  The first time I tried shooting with multiple lights, it took me over two hours to shoot a small condo.  On the latest attempt, it took me about an hour and a half to shoot a 4200 square foot home. 

I am finally realizing that knowing how to position the lights so they provide the desired light and do not reflect into windows and shiny things is something that needs practice – not instruction.  I have read numerous pieces of advice on how to position lights, but in truth you just need to try it yourself and practice.  Unfortunately, I still need to practice some more.

The shot above shows that I still need to look into purchasing a third light.  In previous homes I did not really need one, but that wasn’t the case with this home.  Here, I had one light on the floor below me and another that I bounced off the ceiling above me.  Ideally, I would have liked to have a light in the office so that room wasn’t dark.

I have already reached an agreement with Nelya that if she lists another home like this I can have my third light.  I will most likely purchase an Alienbees light together with a power supply, as I also found that for some rooms I needed one of my flashes at maximum power.  That was OK for this house, but I did realize that with some of these multi-million dollar homes with the sweeping staircases I will need more power (and those homes neighbor this one).

Still, at times I did feel the need for the ‘fake colors’ as Nelya calls them.

Here I had a flash mounted on a silver umbrella behind me, and another one to the left of the room lighting the tub.  This is perhaps another room that could have benefited from three lights.  When I do buy the Alienbees light, I am thinking about putting a very large softbox on it to provide even light.  I would then use my smaller flashes to remove the shadows that necessitate the shadow/highlight feature.

I do think that when I finally remove my reliance on shadow/highlight, I will have turned another page in my real estate photography skills.

By the way, the Pocketwizards really showed their stuff today.  Admittedly I haven’t played around with the ST-E2 much, but I severely doubt it would have worked in many of the situations today where there was a wall or floor between me and the other lights.  Also, I often shot with the light behind me, as in this shot.  The other light here was in the walk in closet.

All in all I had fun shooting this house.  I still have a ways to go with my photography but I can see improvement which is the important thing.  My next goal is to remove my dependency on shadow/highlight and from there the differences are really fine points – the fine points that make the difference between an average photo and an amazing one.  Of course these fine points take a significant amount of time and experimentation to properly learn.

Of course, even nicer is that it appears that the home will sell quickly.

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By the way, my wife wanted me to mention that this home has already sold, but if you would like to discuss selling or buying a home with her you can contact her from her web site.

The first light is rather easy to place.  Typically I attach it to a silver umbrella, then sometimes bounce it off a wall or aim it straight at the room but reduce the power.  Sometimes this is enough to light a room.  For example, in this room I wound up using just this one light – which was to the left of the camera.

The tricky part comes with what to do with the second light.  First, I have come to realize that the second light isn’t always necessary.  For many pictures, it is best left turned off and to the side.  However, there are times when having the second light really helps.

  In the room above, it is probably evident that I placed the light under the second chair on the right.  I did this to try to remove some of the shadows from the room – particularly those of the chairs themselves.  You can still see the shadow of the first chair but overall the shadows are much less than without the second light.

The trick here is to get the power on the light perfect.  In this shot it is a tad too strong but in this next one I got it completely wrong.

Here you can see that my attempt to reduce shadows actually caused more shadows.  Sometimes the results can be a bit comical, but here they’re just plain ugly.

Verify often the second light can be very useful in bathrooms with sliding doors covering the shower.

  Here, as you can see, I placed the light in the shower.  Unfortunately the ‘curse of mirros’ got me and you can see a reflection of the light in the mirror.  As you can see, I’m still working on placing the light correctly.  In another shot that is no longer with us, the flash was too powerful and gave the impression that ‘God was speaking from the shower’.

This shot came out a bit better.  The second flash was in the walk in closet at the end of the shot – illuminating the night gown.  It does a very good job of reminding viewers that there is a walk in closet.

As you can see, a second light can be very helpful both for removing shadows from the first light and illuminating parts of the shot poorly lit from the first light.  The second light can also be used for accenting part of the picture – giving a hint of particular aspects of the house that viewers should pay attention to.

Nelya’s next listing is much bigger than this one, so I should have an even better chance to practice soon.

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However, Light: Science and Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting is not one of those books.  This is a book that you will refer over and over to and is well worth the investment.  In fact, in my opinion this book is required reading.  It is not for beginners, but anyone who hopes to understand light at all should have it.

First, let me stress again that this book is not for beginners.  It assumes that you already know the basics of photography and how to properly expose a picture.  What it doesn’t assume, however, is that you know anything about light.

The great thing about this book is that it works hard to make you understand the principles behind lighting.  While it does give a variety of lighting setups for different purposes, it goes into detail about why the lights are setup in that way.  The goal of the book is not for you to memorize a number of lighting setups, but for you to know the principles behind lighting so you can create your own arrangements.

Amazingly, the principles behind lighting are well covered in the first fifty pages.  The rest of the book is spent covering these principles for different applications.  This is not a book to casually read while in a noisy room.  I found myself often rereading paragraphs and thinking while reading as many of the setups do become complex.

The main principles behind lighting, quoting directly from the book are.

1. The effective size of the light source is the single most important decision in lighting a photograph.
2. Three types of reflection are possible from any surface.  They determine why any surface looks the way it does.
3. Some of these reflections occur only if light strikes the surface from within a limited family of angles.

The three types of reflection are diffused, direct, and polarized.  In essence, the rest of the book spends it time discussing these principles in detail and how they apply to different types of material.  These sound simple and easy to understand, but there are a number of gotchas in practice.

From there, each chapter covers a different type of material and how the principles relate to it.  The materials slowly increase in complexity, so the book is best read from cover to cover.  All types of lighting are covered – from product photography, to portraits, to interior and exterior lighting.  Again, the main focus of the book is not for you to learn what type of lighting to use in each situation, but to understand the principles of lighting so you can know how to setup the lights for distinct situations.

This book works equally well for those who work with strobes vs traveling lights.  A chapter at the end is devoted to traveling lights, but the principles apply to both.  I do find myself wanting large strobes after reading this, though.  At the very least you truly understand the differences between large and small lights and I found myself wanting to setup my own studio after reading this.

Currently product and portrait photography are not large parts of my arsenal, though I have applied many of the ideas and principles in this book to macro photography – particularly understanding direct vs diffused reflection and the family of angles when choosing how to light an insect given its exterior.  When I do move more to portraits and products, I will reference this book often and reread the specific chapters.

This is one of those books that is worth rereading occasionally.  With many other books I find that I have moved on after a time.  I have grown to understand the material well enough that rereading the book isn’t worth the time.  That is not the case with this book, as I suspect even lighting masters will pick something up with each new rereading.

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Framing

In simple terms, your picture must not look like a snapshot.  A snapshot is typically defined as those millions of vacation shots that come out each year of random things.  More specifically, a snapshot is defined as a picture that didn’t require thought and looks like it.  OK, so maybe that’s not so specific.

In order to have a properly framed picture, you need to pay attention to the layout of the objects inside it.  For instance, watch what is creeping into the picture.  Very often trees and other things find their way into the picture.  If you find a branch coming into the shot from the side, use Photoshop to clone it out.  Over time you’ll find yourself able to notice this when taking the shot and reframe the picture appropriately.

If you are taking pictures of buildings, make sure the tops aren’t clipped off.  Many stock sites will reject shots of buildings with their tops cut off – even very tall ones.  In general the entire subject should be in the shot – though there are exceptions to this.  Distracting elements also should not be in the picture.  When taking photos of the beach, try to find viewpoints that have the least amount of garbage – then clone out the rest of the garbage in post processing.

Another interesting aspect of microstock photography is that very often the shot that sells the best has the subject in the center of the photo.  This is against the rule of thirds and will make many artists cringe – but the truth is microstock photos are made to be sold – not to be admired.

Bad lighting

Lighting is something you will just need to learn.  Everyone needs to learn about lighting and I think this is the one area where we beginners often encounter issues.  Positively the best book on lighting is Light: Science and Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting, which I will have an in depth review of in the near future.  While this post will give you ideas on what to look for, this book will tell you how to fix them.

First of all, avoid lens flare.  Sometimes this is a function of the lens and other time results from you shooting into the sun.  Know the limits of your lens and avoid shooting directly into the light.  Although some lens flare can be removed from a shot, in my experience most is quite difficult.

Always properly meter your subject.  In this series I assume you have already mastered metering but I must still strongly emphasize that underexposed or overexposed photographs will not be accepted.  This is often a problem on sunny days.  If you are shooting models on a sunny day, make sure to use diffusers and other techniques to soften the sunlight hitting them.  In my experience photographs rejected for lighting generally have a problem in only one part of the photograph – not in the entire shot.  Most cameras today will tell you whether parts of the shot are overexposed and will give you a histogram for each shot.  Pay attention to them.

One technique I use often for traveling and real estate is to photograph either early in the morning or in the late afternoon.  This provides the best quality light and the most saleable pictures.  Ironically when I wind up on a photogenic site during the day, I pray for rain because the dark clouds often provide better lighting.

For macro photography, make sure to use either a macro flash or a tripod.  Very often I see severe lighting issues in macro shots where the photographer did not attempt to use any lighting other than ambient.

If part of your image is overexposed, don’t fret.  If you feel that the image is worth saving, you can often fix it up in Photoshop.  The two techniques I use most often are painting with lighting and cloning.

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This, and all of the shots in this post, were taken with my MP-E 65 in 1x.  While my 180L is closer to being a “normal” macro lens, I have found that I need to light objects taken with my 180L much differently than those from my MP-E 65.  Since at 1x the MP-E 65 is close to being a standard 65mm macro lens, in this mode it is closer to the more popular 100mm macro lenses.

As you can see, the shot is very fuzzy.  I took this shot in aperture priority mode on the camera.  Obviously the shutter speed was not fast enough to compensate for hand holding the camera + lens.  When I metered the subject myself and chose a higher shutter speed the shot was completely black.  Now let’s discuss how I changed things to improve this shot of one of my kids’ Kinder Toys sitting on a plant.

The first thing I did was place a 580EX II on the camera’s hot shoe.  I placed a small soft box over it to diffuse the light.

This is obviously an improvement over the first shot, but note that there are strong shadows here – in particular under its chin.  The plan in the background is also very dark.  In addition, the shirt is a bit over blown.  This should be expected due to where the flash is coming from.  As the flash is coming from an angle overhead, some of it is being blocked by the lens itself.

Next, I used an off camera cord to place the flash with diffuser right above the lens and at an angle aiming down.

This is a bit better.  The shadows are still there, but are not as strong.  The shirt, however, is just as overblown or even more so.  In addition, the shiny spot on its head has become even brighter.  The background, though, is now better illuminated.  However, without a macro flash this is about the best I could do.  The other main problem with using this technique is, unless you have a macro flash bracket, you will need to hold the flash yourself which makes holding the camera and the flash together quite difficult.

The next example used the two headed macro flash MT-24EX.

Here I used the two heads on different sides with equal power.  The shirt is no longer as overexposed and the bright spot on the head is softer.  The background, however, is darker than before.  This is typical of the MT-24EX – which tends to illuminate the subject very well but leaves the background dark.  This is why shots taken with it so often show a subject on a black background.  This shot isn’t so bad, but let’s see if we can improve it.

This shot was also taken with the MT-24EX, but instead of mounting the heads directly onto the MT-24EX, I used a Wimberley macro flash bracket to place one of the lights overhead but slightly behind the figure.  The other light I placed on the right side of the lens.  Again the background is dark, but I have almost completely removed the reflection on the head.  The left side, however, is a bit dark because I moved the light that used to be aimed at it to overhead.  Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to have three lights?  Too bad the MT-24EX only has two heads.  Well, there is technically a solution to this, and I decided to try it out.

In this case, I placed one head of the MT-24EX on the right of the lens – attached to the ring on the end of the lens.  I placed the other head on top, just behind the head using the Wimberley flash bracket.  This is the same setup as before.  I then added a 580EX II with a diffuser on the left side.  How did I do this?  I used Pocket Wizards to trigger the 580EX II.  Actually, since the MT-24EX needed to be attached to the camera, I used one PocketWizard to trigger the camera, another to trigger the flash, and another to use as a remote trigger.  Of course, this meant that I needed to hold both the camera and the trigger, which was a bit tricky.

While this technique does give the best results, I suspect it will only be practical in cases where I can have the camera on a tripod but I need to capture on object that doesn’t stay still.  Water drops seem to be a good example.

The above shot still could use some fine tuning, but the takeaway here is that macro lighting is similar to other types of lighting.  It follows the same rules and requires the same amount of attention.

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Real estate photography

I have spent some time researching and found that most of the best photographs I have seen use hot shoe strobes.  This is the main reason that I am only considering Pocket Wizards or Radiopoppers.  The ST-E2 will not work through walls or in other situations necessary for real estate and I have heard of too many problems with the cactus triggers.  This is also the area where I expect the triggers to pay for themselves.

Kids

                                Basically I want to use off camera flash(es) to improve shots of my kids.

Experimentation

                                There are a number of experiments I would like to try such as the strobist assignments.  On a more serious note I would like to use remote flash for background lighting in macro and I would like to trigger the camera remotely.  I have tried using the MT-24EX to trigger my 580EX but found it unreliable outdoors.

So after some research, the following are how I see the two stacking up.

Areas where they are the same

                Both support rear curtain sync

                Canon wireless supports 3 firing zones.  Multimax supports 4.

                Both allow you to set flashes in manual mode (often overlooked in Radiopoppers)

                Price

                                If I go the Pocketwizards route, I plan to purchase 4 multimaxes 1 580 EX II, and 2 Vivitars. 

                                If I go the RadioPoppers route, I plan to purchase 4 radiopoppers, 1 580 EX II, 1 ST-E2, and 2 430EX.

                                (note: I am ignoring umbrellas/light stands here because they are the same for both solutions)  In these cases, the difference in price is around $100 which is negligible given the total cost.

Advantages of the RadioPoppers

                TTL, so in some cases I will not need to manually set my flashes

                Remote manual configuration.  I will not need to walk to each flash to configure it.

                Supports high speed sync mode

Advantages of Pocketwizards (Multimax)

                Increased range of 1600’ (more with relay mode) vs 100’-300’ of Radiopoppers, though I doubt I would need the extended range

                Can trigger the camera

                Can connect to strobes (Alienbees, etc)

                Intervalometer, so I can take timed pictures – useful for star trails and change over time shots

                Known to be dependable.  Radiopoppers have had good reviews but are not battle tested.

                More channels – 32 vs 1.  However the Radiopopper P8 shipping later this year will close the gap.

                Sequential triggering, though I don’t see it being useful for much more than experimentation.

                Longer battery length (150 hours vs. 10 hours)

                Unit firmware is updateable using USB cable

Summary

                The main allure of the Radiopoppers is the ability to set the flashes without going to each flash.  When shooting a room, this should let me get things done faster.  The TTL isn’t as important, as I will likely still set the flashes manually.

                In terms of the Multimaxes, the main feature I find useful is being able to trigger the camera, but other features also make a difference.  Other than high speed sync, the Multimaxes offer far more possibilities for experimentation.  Being able to connect to strobes also may prove very important, as if I find myself shooting a very large room I may have to bring in a large strobe.  The longer battery length is also something to consider.

Right now I am leaning towards the Multimaxes do to the feature set.  I am very tempted by the time savings with the Radiopoppers, but the increased flexibility of the Multimaxes is hard to turn down right now.

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Here’s the ugly truth, for the majority of macro photographs natural light simply won’t cut it. Yes, there are exceptions of course. I once had a discussion with another photographer on whether the MT-24EX (or the MR-14EX) is necessary when using the MP-E 65. His answer was that he does abstract photography at F2.8. Well, if you want to take blurry pictures at F2.8 (and I must admit that his look quite nice) then you do not need lighting. If you object is stationary, you can use a tripod and macro rail and unnatural lighting may not be necessary – though you will probably find some reflectors and diffusers helpful. For insects and flowers bouncing in the wind though, you will need some lighting.

There are a variety of lighting solutions you can use and there are even more custom solutions out there. The key gotcha in macro is that your standard on-camera flash will not work. It has to do with the angle between the flash and your lens. Because you are getting very close to the subject, your lens will block some of the light. In a number of situations you will also need the light to be powerful – meaning almost right on your subject. On camera flash simply cannot do this. Note that by “on-camera” I mean both the popup flashes you find on some camera models and the hot-shoe flashes (such as the Canon 580EX) that you can buy. There is a difference though. While the popup flash is practically useless for macro, a hot shoe flash can be made useful if you can direct the light better to your subject or get the flash off the camera.

To get the flash off the camera, simply buy an extension cord. They are not very expensive and are well worth it. If you follow strobists, you can also use his techniques for off camera. Another solution is to create a reflective “tunnel” that goes from the flash mounted to the hot shoe to the front of the lens.

When I first started in macro photography, I would manually hold the flash off the camera. I used a tripod to hold the camera and I held the flash and the remote trigger. This took decent photos, but eventually I wanted more. “More”, meant a solution specifically for macro.

Canon happens to sell two different lighting solutions for macro. Nikon also has solutions, but I am not as familiar with them. At the low end is the MR-14EX, which is basically a ring flash. At the high end is the twin flash MT-24EX. There is, of course, debate on which is better. Those who favor the MR-14EX say the MT-24EX is too harsh (the flashes are bare vs. the MR-14EX diffused) and they prefer the effect of the MR-14EX. Those who favor the MT-24EX like its increased versatility and feel the light from the MR-14EX is too flat, too with MR-14EX favorers respond that this can be fixed through settings. Personally, I strongly prefer the MT-24EX. It is true that out of the box the lights are too harsh – but this is easily corrected with diffusers. I prefer this mainly because I can reposition the lights as needed and try more interesting effects – such as changing the direction and angles of the lights.

In terms of what type of lighting you will get, this mainly has to do with money. If you can afford it, and you are serious about macro, get the $650 MT-24EX. If you don’t know how much you’ll get into macro, get an extension cord for your hot shoe flash. For an end today, I will show two photos of somewhat similar subjects to show how lighting (and lenses) can make a difference.

The first was taken with a Canon 500D diopter on a Sigma 80-400mm lens with a 580EX flash off the camera. Notice the shadows and poor details.

This one was taken with the Canon MP-E 65 and the MT-24EX.

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