2004-06-08

Nuclear Macro Spider Portrait Lighting Made Simple

Recently, I've found myself doing macro shots of black widow spiders. Why is a rather involved story, but I can say that great certainty that I am NOT starting a transvestite spider fetish fire cult. I've been getting good results from my 35-350L with a 72mm 500D close-up adapter set at 350mm; a little extra working distance is advisable when working with highly poisonous and occasionally aggressive spider subjects. The downside to shooting macro at 350mm is that depth of field is just a tad thin unless using very tiny apertures, like f/36. This means that flash power becomes a significant issue; you need a lot of light to get a decent exposure at that aperture at any range. So I've been using my triple flash rig to get a 550EX and a pair of 420EX flashes to light the subject, with moderately good results:

But as you can see, spiders (and black widows in particular) are shiny; dark glossy finished creatures with fur that is also glossy. This makes the use of direct flash problematic--you have to choose the angle of the shot based on where you want the hard, specular reflections to be, as opposed to the angle you really want for maximum dramatic effect. So since I'm a gadget-oriented kind of guy, I decided do devise a solution to the problem. Here's what I came up with:

It's a 550EX flash with 2 420EX flashes velcroed to it and a Westcott Micro Apollo mini softbox attached. The stand is a Radio Shack microphone boom stand with the topmost section of a 10 foot Smith Victor light stand attached to the threaded end of the boom where the microphone mount would normally attach. This allows the boom to be configured so that the counterweight at the end can be extended out as far as possible to counterbalance the weight of the flash units and still have the base of the stand far enough away from the spider webs so that the occupants don't feel the need to go hide in the nearest crack or go on the warpath, which is a bad thing where black widow spiders are concerned. Here's a comparison shot made with the softbox rig: