Thanks Chris - some hefty cropping needed here of course - and the diffusion still needs work. Not a patch on the diffusion
@GardenersHelper gets with his new YN24EX setup - I think I need to try and get the design off Nick to try out!
Paul.
That's fascinating Paul. So do they move the aphids around?
As to the diffusion, I'm re-using the diffuser setup that I used with the KX800.
1887 3 by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
The box on each flash head has two layers of "plastic paper" (I don't know exactly what it is. I got it from a local shop that unfortunately has now closed down. They used to buy it in big sheets and cut it up and sell it as A4 sheets. I tried to find out exactly what it was but they were rather vague about it and I couldn't pin it down.)
The box on each flash head is about 50mm deep. The inner layer is about half way down in the box, so around 25mm away from the flash head. The second layer is over the front of the box, so around 25mm away from the first layer.
In this shot I had the flash head focusing LEDs on and you can see that the bright area is still somewhat square looking on the second layer.
1887 4 by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
One change I have made is to move the third layer a bit further away from the flash head boxes. The next view shows that the bight areas are rounder than on the second layer with a softer transition away from the brightest central area from each flash head. Ideally I'd like to have the third layer completely smoothly illuminated but I haven't come close to that in any of my experiments.
1887 5 by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
There are several things that aren't to do with the diffusion that may be making it look like my diffusion is better.
One is that I cheat. I still get nasty flash reflections with highly reflective subjects. I sometimes use cloning to try to repair areas that have gone pear-shaped. That is difficult to do convincingly though, and so more often I use low opacity cloning to wash over the troublesome areas to add a low level of colour to reduce the brightness.
I'm not doing that as often as I did previously. I have a hunch, although I can't prove it, that the A7sii that I've just started using, with its small number of bigger pixels, may be handling highlights better and giving me more to work with in post processing.
Another factor may be that because of the magnification I've got now I'm getting closer in on some subjects, and the nearer you are to the subject the larger the area of the light source is when seen from the perspective of the subject, and that softens the light.
Sometimes the flash reflections are not so bad from different angles, although I don't understand why that should be with something with a highly rounded surface like a ladybird or the back end of an ant. I would expect it to be much the same whatever angle you look at from.
However, the fact remains that (some) ants, ladybirds and bluebottle flies for example are still highly problematic for me because of the flash reflections.
