glare or highlights on black beetle - poor diffuser ?

Joseph S Wisniewski wrote:

jim mij wrote:

hi,

If Darth Vader were a beetle he might have looked like the following pic...

I was trying to get a shot of a black beetle today but glare or reflections on the shiny top of its head ruined things somewhat

I moved the beetle somewhere darker, so the main light was only coming from the flash

I've searched the forum for hints on reducing glare, not that many, and of the 3 the best idea seemed to be suggesting a concave diffuser and two flashes.

Well, do you do any studio portrait work?

My first rule of photography:

Everything is a portrait.

Just because it's an insect doesn't mean it doesn't have a personality, or that you don't want to impose one upon it. You compared your beetle to "Darth Vader". Look at some movie caps of ol' dark dome: does he ever get shot with a big diffused light from directly overhead?

Most portraits involve at least two separate light: main and fill, and neither of them are aligned anything like a single macro diffuser. I've done things that do work like that: literally with two 4x6 ft soft-boxes pushed together to make an 8x6, with me squished between them shooting through a small gap. Vincent Versace took an 8ft octabank and added a tunnel through it near the center so he can use it as a "ring light" larger than the model. Unless you're a skilled fashion photographer, don't do that.

Mine is homemade and flat using a single top mounted flash, which has been ok so far for most things as I've not often noticed glare like this

You've got a subject that can look wet and oily. That's a gift: don't waste it. Single, smaller main off to one side or the other. Larger fill, but again off to one side or the other.

I'm looking at that picture and thinking "I'd like the light to be a tiny point, like a small flash with no diffuser 6 feet away" which means the highlights on the insect are going to be sharp, bright points. They will blow out... let them.

Then pick your favorite lens for "sun stars" and let those highlights make some.

I see that the high end diffusers are also concave, but i dont really know why (other than it looks cool)

Mechanical strength and spring tension?

Do you think thats an answer?, or could it be the diffuser material is insufficient ? or something else ? ...

I think the concept is the problem, not the qualities of the material.

• What is the beetle's story?
• What is it trying to tell us, or what are you trying to tell us about it?

If you can't answer those questions, how can you paint the light on to add that emotional content into the scene?

Practice!

Get yourself a couple of well preserved beetles you can take home. If one isn't as shiny as your subject here, give it a nice spray of lacquer. Then start placing lights and shooting.

Remember, in the field you have to be fast with your lighting, so you might think about getting a cage or bracket for the camera that will support some flex arms and small flashes. The plan the shoot around one particular mood, like "for the next two hours I will be shooting "glamorous fashion bugs"" and on a different outing thing "I'm shooting super-villain bugs" or "I am trying to express technophobia through mechanistic looking bugs". Set your lighting rig up like that, and then if today's shoot is "bad boy bugs" and you see the perfect "love bug" ignore it, move on, and continue looking for the "bad boy beetle".

Plan the shoot, then shoot the plan!

Ideas (and pics of DIY concave diffusers) welcome

thanks

Jim

manual stack of two - lightly edited - but glare on head is terrible

Do you have any sample macro photos if insects using your ideas? While I like the concept of "shoot everything like a portrait", some things often wont translate. People arent made of shiny exoskeletons, we are considerabally larger obviously, we dont have multiple eyes or compound eyes, etc etc. A single bare flash at a distance may be something you would for some reason prefer, but that is generally just bad advice here.

Using a single diffuser is a proven method to get the results many people want. Its literally optimal. Not just the best option, but the perfect one. I sometimes use a single speedlight and diffuser, sometimes a twin flash with a single diffuser and sometimes a twin flash with 2 diffusers. Your suggestion for finding a bracket has also already been solved in mumerous ways. What are you suggesting there?

I think the best way to approach this is to look at photos which have the same or similar results to what you want, practice and then experiment/tweak from there.