My basic setup consists of a Canon EOS R5, RF 100mm f2.8L IS Macro lens, Gitzo tripod, and Arca Swiss P0 ball head with an old RRS 31A macro slider with MPR-CL plate. I sometimes use a Godox Litemons LED cube light for fill.
Canon EOS R5RF100mm F2.8 L MACRO IS USM lens100mmf/8.01/3s100 ISO0.0 EV
molson wrote:
My basic setup consists of a Canon EOS R5, RF 100mm f2.8L IS Macro lens, Gitzo tripod, and Arca Swiss P0 ball head with an old RRS 31A macro slider with MPR-CL plate. I sometimes use a Godox Litemons LED cube light for fill.
It clearly gives good results. However, the light cube is designed to spread the light out over, I'm guessing, 180 degrees. You can make a hood-like light guide by wrapping a rectangle of aluminium foil around the cube and projecting forward for as far as you find useful. This will place more light where you want it and shorten exposure times when using full flash rather than fill.
Problem - How to light semi translucent items, like flower pedals, and take the photo with just one light and on a black background.
Solution - I used a single studio flash. It happened to be a Godox SK400, but could have been with a much smaller light.
I attached it to a Godox 32" square folding wire frame soft box and positioned this soft box behind a 38" square table with a black 54" square black table cloth.
The camera was on a tripod (actually a camera stand) and positioned on the opposite side of the table so the soft box and camera lens directly faced each other.
I hung a 12" square piece of black felt from a light stand with a clamp on the top and a piece of 5/8 X 3' dowel clamped at 90 degrees with the felt hanging from it. I placed this felt just in front of the soft box and centered with the bottom edge of it touching the back edge of the table top to keep light from leaking under the bottom edge of the felt. Light from the soft box can pass this felt on either side and the top of the piece of felt.
I used a chemistry stand, placed on the table top, but to one side and out of sight of the camera, to hold the branch of cherry blossoms, that were positioned roughly in the center of the table and roughly centered in front of the black cloth. Light coming around the sides and top of the black felt will now provide back light to the flower pedals.
To light the face sides of the branch and flower pedals I used two small pieces of white foam core (could have been matt board) A clamped to two short pieces of wood to provide feet for holding the foam core pieces roughly vertical. These were positioned on the camera side of the cherry blossoms out of the camera lens view on each side of the table top and angled so that they would reflect the light coming from the sides of the soft box to reflect back at the face side of the branch and flowers.
To prevent lens flare I used a large piece of black foam core with a hole in it's center, large enough for the camera lens to see through and small enough that light coming from the sides and top of the soft box from reaching the camera lens. Slight changes of position may be necessary to this, as well as the small pieces of white foam core to keep them working well, but out of the shot.
I used a 24-70mm Canon lens on one of my Canon cameras(77D or 90D) to take this photo, but most any adjustable camera and adjustable zoom lens of this approximate size will work. I adjusted the camera F Stop high enough to block the lower level ceiling light in the room from affecting the shot (I think F11). This also provided good depth of focus for the shot. I then adjust the light from the soft box for the desired brightness of the shot. The camera sync speed of 1/250 second was used.
This is a relatively easy shot to do, once you have everything positioned "just right". A few test shots and flash level adjustments may be needed, and careful attention to possible lens flare will be necessary, but once you have the spacing right and the reflections right to light the facing side of the subject flowers as well as the back side, you will find it easy to repeat this general setup for other shots using similar lighting tricks. Bottles and vases do well in this lighting too.
