Those with a fetish for sharpness demand to see the hairs on a bee's knees and scales on a butterfly wing through the magnifier on a lightbox. The perennial problem is that for close-ups of flowers, insects et alia a film of fine grain is essential for sharpness: to achieve a workable depth of field requires small apertures (Ä16 and below). Both preconditions point towards slow shutter speeds in order that sufficient light reaches the film for correct exposure.
A good tripod can eliminate camera shake but what, one asks, of the photographer's wind? This not the same dubious bowel condition brought on by a combination of dissolute living and the odd postures adopted in pursuit of prey - it is that almost imperceptible image-softening vibration which takes place even on the calmest of days.
Memories of O-level physics (readers will not remember those pre-GCSE hurdles?) provide the explanation. You sit in front of a flower under clear skies and the solitary cloud in the firmament races across whilst you are not looking to blot out the sun. The air is still, the sun re-appears, radiant energy warms the ground, the air above immediately makes contact, heats up and convection currents start creating a breeze in the micro-climate at ground level.
Natural light and all-day patience might give you a superb picture or two of a butterfly. Great, but there might be fifty or so other species in that field on a French hillside needed for book illustrations and I want to photograph them consistently, painlessly (to them and to me) and to publishable quality - which means biting sharpness and saturated colour.
The answer is a flash, but used so the background is illuminated - perhaps a stop or two darker than the subject - thus retaining some colour, accentuating the subject. Modern TTL flash can, with a bit of fine-tuning, provide the answer, although from comments in classes I run each year on the subject initial efforts can be very disappointing.
Before TTL arrived I used just about every flash system around - including a home built arrangement with 'portable' flashmeter (in a sandwich box) which read a test flash through the eyepiece of an aged Canon F1. This project was shelved after a trip to a pond in southern England to photograph the tiny bog orchid: passers by were treated to the curious spectre of a light flash and then curious gyrations from the manic gnome poised over the tripod. This was a blanket bog, slowly sinking, and as flash connectors touched the water, the acidic swamp showed it was an excellent conductor of electricity.
In more recent times I have used both Olympus and Nikon macro systems with their attendant macro flash - I loved the macro lens-heads and flashguns of the OM system, but sold it with maximum reluctance when a need for rugged reliability led me Nikon-wards.
Nikon, like Canon and Minolta advertises a 'Macroflash' - in this case
the SB-21B which, coupled to my F4 and F801 bodies, has been used for many
thousands of exposures over four years and has proved to be very
dependable when idiosyncrasies were recognised.
External appearance suggests a ring-flash - a light source which produces flat results and has appeal to me as does flash for the purist. The unit in fact has twin flash tubes detached from a standard power source and linked via a heavy-duty cable. I first used it with some doubt that it would suit my needs, because the flash tubes lay relatively close to the optical axis of the lens and, seemingly, would not give the relief needed.
By using flash off-axis, tiny shadows created by surface details can give an impression of extra sharpness, an often-overlooked factor which enhances close-up and macro photographs. Much of my flash photography involves reproduction ratios of 1:1 and greater which brings macro lenses close to the subject. Now, for example, with the unit fitted to the Nikon 60mm Macro AF the flash tubes are some 30¡ off axis: with the 105mm Macro the relief is about 25¡ - suprising, but close-focusing is achieved by a moving element which reduces the focal length to around 80mm at 1:1.
The results give a very pleasing quality of lighting with both tubes used - I often use a ND filter over one tube to prevent too many shadows of insect legs. And when photographing insects with shiny wing cases or eyes watch for dreaded twin-headlights - these are definitely not natural unless you are depicting wildlife of Superman's natal planet with its twin suns (and then, if memories from my ill-spent youth serve me correctly, one would be blue the other red).
Exposure occasionally needs a little thought although the matrix system meters 'average subjects' impeccably and, in fairness, does not do too badly otherwise problems occur with the proverbial 'black-cat in a coal-hole' and white pasque flowers coming through snow...
A wee bit of fine tuning is required with yellow subjects dominating the viewfinder; these are more reflective than one thinks, fool the meter and cause under-exposure. Spot metering and a plus 2/3 to 1 stop correction for the yellows and around 2 stops for the whites (to give a very pale grey and retain detail) works well but each camera needs to be tested.
What such a set-up provides is a means of getting consistently sharp pictures with a minimum of fuss - when you get used to it then it is almost a case of point and shoot. My macro lenses have rusted into position at around Ä16-Ä22, autofocus is not used for focus but just to change magnification before shooting, and is definitely in the off position for picture taking.
Having located the subject - a butterfly on a leaf, for example - the technique is to advance closely, along the line of sight with the scale of reproduction set before hand.
When close, tilt gently towards the subject and press the shutter button when sharp focus is achieved - obviously you stop falling forward before you hit the insect (what we conservationists call concern for subject). With care you evolve a gentle rocking which provides a second and third bite at the cherry, useful for producing essential duplicates in-camera. An in-built winder means no flailing fingers between frames, which also scare off wary insects, and once brought immortal lines from a daughter then six: "Daddy, why do the butterflies fly and then the flash goes?". This set-up is used for magnifications of between 0.5 and 2.0X life size in the field with macro lenses plus extension tube or converter. You need to have led a blame-free life to go any higher than X2 without the shakes setting in - and if your life has been that pure you probably convulse with resentment anyway!
Film choice has dictated either Kodachrome 64 or Fujichrome Velvia - where K64 scored highly was in the slight increase in speed which at a nominal Ä16 (effective Ä32 at 1:1) and 1/60th exposure of the background permitted some colour. With the slower Fuji, unless I can get some surrounding vegetation such as leaves and stems close enough to reflect some of the light, then black backgrounds result. Recent tests with Fuji's Sensia 100 and Provia 100 suggest that this problem will soon be a thing of the past.
Black backgrounds are a vexed love 'em or hate 'em question - in Britain, they were once fashionable, as were the dreaded artificial blue backgrounds, but no more. Surprisingly, in the US of A they are back 'in' once again and old pictures lodged with agencies there are showing sales.
Occasionally I have used a much slower synch speed (1/15 or less) with Velvia, but then the subject movement can produce ghosts. And there is nothing worse than getting back pictures of a rare butterfly with biting sharpness, every wing scale visible but ghosts sitting at the wing tips...
So, are macroflash set-ups worth the price tag of Nikon SB-21B - circa £ 490 - or Canon ML-3 - about £280? If you want to get stock pictures on flower heads, close-ups of 100 or more cactus or orchid flowers at a botanic garden in an afternoon (as I have done on many occasions) - the answer could be yes: no one who has purchased one regrets it.
There is a cheaper solution, however. A couple of summers ago disaster struck with some of the best photographs I had ever taken - silhouettes of a butterfly, the two-tailed Pascha against a background perfectly lit by natural light. My son and I had baited this creature in France using rotten figs, an itinerant boar had eaten the figs, and the aforesaid fruit had acted in time-honoured fashion as figs always do.
The butterflies, no accounting for the taste, preferred the droppings. To capture them on film I can dropped to my knees, wriggled towards them and gently pressed...
The unit went away for repair to Nikon (a cable had come adrift) but I
had an urgent commission. I purchased two small Nikon SB-23 guns second
hand (circa £75 each) and then grimaced at the rip-off price for the
connecting cables. Nikon warn that with one SB-23 the second cannot be a
slave; no matter, the the same electronic signal from camera reaches each
to quench the flash after desired exposure is reached.
I made a bracket from bits of my old Kennet Macroflash, out of the same stable as the Benbo tripod and example of when British engineering meant something. The guns are further from the lens axis and the total output greater, so they can be used a little further from the subject and background fall-off is not so noticible. The same principle can be used with other makes of bracket.
One of the guns has a ND X2 filter taped to it (even when it falls off the results have been OK). It looks cumbersome but is surprisingly well balanced and is often used in preference to the SB-21B for insects, since I can use it with longer macro lenses or even zooms with extension tubes.
The other reason is not so much choice as having teenage children who thought it would be fun to use (have you got any spare film dad?) who share their Mother's flattering opinion of her spouse's talents (if Daddy can do it then it must be easy...).
Things which fly into the garden and on to the Buddleia bush are easily captured an film and, blast them, the little sods have taken some extremely good pictures.
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