Close Up Photography
Continuation of the the large Natural History reference book, in which the latest creature I had to photograph was a Jungle Nymph, a somewhat large and brightly coloured insect.
Used the Canon 65mm at about 3x magnification. An amazing lens for close up work, but quite difficult to use. As the lens has no specific focusing ring, one has to pull the focus by bringing the lens in or out from the subject. To make this somewhat easier I used a Manfrotto micro positioning plate. With it you can control very finely the lens to obtain accurate focus. Because the insect is nocturnal, it was completely dormant during the shoot. It was so still, l that I could take a whole series of shots at different focussing points, to achieve a greater depth of field. These were used in Photoshop to create one good final image. The latest version of photoshop can do this automatically and in my experience always achieves excellent results as long as you focus on all the relevant points. Lighting was with a honeycomb from the left hand side, fill from a head bounced from a white ceiling and some more fill with a strip light from the righthand side. The insect had to be lit with a lot of side lighting as the lens is so close to the subject that it is difficult for light to hit the subject. The alternative would be to use a ringflash, but I prefer to work with this lighting set up. Happy at the results, any comments would be welcome.
