Super Nick - love the motion of the wing in the last image.
Paul.
Lovely detailed images as always Nick
Very nice Nick - I love seeing your stuff
Les
Your normal excellent shots Nick, all very nice.
What is the kit you was testing if you don`t mind sharing.
Nicely done Nick as always
Thanks all for the kind comments.
Graham, it was a variant of this setup that I was testing at the end of last year.
1817 4 Double 2X TC with 100mm 2X macro on A7ii by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
I was trying it with one of the teleconverters removed to see if that still gave me enough magnification and depth of field for my usual subjects, flies and wasps etc, rather than the smaller springtails, barkflies etc I was dealing with (because it was all I could find) last December. I was thinking that I might use it with just the one teleconverter most of the time but keep the other teleconverter with me in case I wanted to photograph tiny subjects, something that in the past I haven't tried very often because I found it so difficult and the results not very pleasing for the most part. As it happens, during a short test session something turned up that made me regret not having the second teleconverter fitted; this little springtail (just under 1mm long I estimate ) was only visible for several seconds, and I don't recall seeing one like this before. This inclines me to go back to having both teleconverters on all the time so I can respond quickly when fleeting opportunities arise.
1879 10 2021_04_23 DSC00510_PLab4 LR 1300h AIS by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
I also removed the front diffusion layer because I was finding it difficult to get close enough to subjects because it was getting in the way, I tried moving the flash heads back towards the camera a bit to help with that too. However, because of the tiny apertures I'm using it is difficult to throw enough light on the scene and I'm already using quite high flash power (which impacts recycle time) and already using ISOs in the neighbourhood of 3200 for darker scenes, so moving the flash heads further away from the subject is a balancing act.
I'm still working on tests, comparisons etc to help me decide whether to stick with this big, heavy piece of kit or go back to close-up lens based kit of a size and weight I feel more comfortable with, and forego the extra depth of field (which I'm very disinclined to do). The close-up lens kits seem more responsive, letting me react faster, and make it easier to get at awkwardly placed subjects. Possibly I'll just keep the heavy kit for the very small things (for which it is definitely better all round), although I wouldn't want to carry two sets of kit each rigged with its own flash setup (the arm positions are different, and difficult to get right, especially for the heavy kit). That would mean having to decide whether to go out kitted for medium sized subjects or small ones. I don't fancy that either!
Work in progress. (I recently started
a blog where I'm talking about this stuff. Talking to myself I think, but that's fine. Writing things down helps me sort things out in my own mind.)
