Studio Flash

Flash can be expensive. The top-of-the-line Canon and Nikon flashes, for instance, cost upwards of $500. In addition, if you want to take photos in quick succession, you’ll need an external battery pack, another few hundred dollars. There’s a cheaper and better solution, at least for studio setups. That’s to use an wall-socket-powered studio-type flash unit. Inexpensive, of course, is relative, and not all studio-style flashes are inexpensive. Cost goes up with flash power, but for macro, relatively low power output units work fine. These flashes mount on light stands, sort of like tripods. They provide a lot of light and quick recycling.

Studio flashes come in two main varieties. One type uses a separate power supply that powers multiple heads using high-voltage cabling. The power supply then plugs into the wall. The other type integrates power supply and flash unit in one piece. These are called monolights, mono because they’re all in one piece. Monolights tend to be cheaper if you’re only using one or two. The photos in this chapter were made with just one monolight.

The photos in this chapter were made using a studio-type flash that I’ve had for years, made by the Paul C. Buff company. It’s a White Lightning Ultra 1200, a model that is no longer being made. Their more recent models include some very inexpensive units, including a range of flashes somewhat smaller than mine called Alien Bees. I haven’t used any of these more modern flashes, but I’d expect them to work at least as well as my decades-old unit. There are numerous other manufacturers of monolights. A web search will bring up tons of products.

The setup seen here shows the flash unit with a reflector on the front pointed down at a 32 inch round translucent diffuser. Under the diffuser is the white bowl where I’ll be putting the subjects. There’s a penny in the bowl, and if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to get both the penny and the critter in the same photograph to show scale. The combination of the large diffuser with the white bowl gives a very even light.

One disadvantage to studio-type flashes is that, unlike the camera manufacturers’ dedicated flashes, they don’t communicate exposure information with the camera. You set aperture on the camera and power level on the flash, and if you need to change exposure, you can vary one or the other or both. It’s important to check histograms to be sure you’re getting good exposures. << need sidebar on histograms and how they should look >> 

You’ll likely find that you need to dial the flash’s power level down quite a bit to get a proper exposure. At f/11 and ISO 200, I got decent exposures with the flash set at about 1/32 of full power. But don’t use that setting without making your own tests. Every flash and setup is a little different, and the settings that work for me are almost certainly wrong for you. I didn’t time the recycling of the flash, but it seemed to run about one second or less, so I rarely had to wait.

I used a sync cable that ran from the flash to my camera. The flash takes a ¼ inch phone plug connection, but my camera has only a hot shoe for flash control, so I had to use some adapters to complete the connection.

When I pulled the bowl out of the camera closet, it had a few dust specks. I initially thought I’d clean it, but then I noticed a tiny spider that seemingly was hanging in mid air near the bottom. Of course it had built a web, but the strands were so fine I couldn’t see them. This was a subject I didn’t even have to look for. I put the bowl into the setup, and began shooting.

The spider did a lot of running around near the bottom of the bowl, but couldn’t get up the sides. It also stopped frequently. When it did, I’d make some photos. I was using an Olympus OM-D E-M5 with an Olympus 60mm f/2.8 macro lens, set for 1:1 magnification. The camera was set for manual exposure, and mostly at f/11, to avoid excessive diffraction.

At high magnification when using manual exposure settings, it’s important to keep in mind that changing focus also means changing exposure. << digression into bellows factor >>

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