When the ring doesn't work

Orange

So I showed in the last post how the ring flash suited macro subjects there the detail was was more tonal rather than textural. This is what strobist calls the "3-D-yet-flat look" and it worked pretty well for some subjects I tried. however some things just didn't work at all. The best example being an orange. To properly capture the detail of the pitted, shiney, surface of this fruit I needed to use hard light at raking angles.

Setup

One strobe camera left with a black straw grid another left with the pop-out diffuser

Post Process

Nothing major - just a few tonal adjustments in lightroom.

Putting the ring to work

Wooden Cube Puzzle

Since building my DIY ring fash I've not had a whole lot of time to use it but yesterday when I found myself with a few extra hours at home (courtesy of the storms that hit the south east of England and caused my train to be cancelled) I thought I'd have a play. I decided to try it out as a light source for macro shots.

I found it worked pretty well for some subjects. The ones which worked best were the things which had little surface texture. The ring doesn't provide the shadows & highlights needed to define texture. On the other hand subjects like this puzzle where all the texture is in the wood and the suface is smooth works brilliantly.

Setup

I shot tethered to the laptop so the images came up in Lightroom for detailed inspection. The setup was pretty much just the ring, camera, tripod and a couple of clamps. I used the torch as a focus assist lamp.

Post Processing

Besides the tone adjustments shown below I applied a farly shallow, smooth, S-curve in the curves control.