My Journey into Extreme Macro
The Big Hobby of the Tiny
1. Introduction
Roughly one year ago, I involuntarily triggered a personal butterfly effect by dipping my toes into the field of extreme macro photography. An impulse action that has ballooned and escalated in ways I could not foresee.
This article documents my extreme macro journey as well as my setup in such detail that it also is somewhat of an extreme macro mini course. Before we get to the specifics of that, first some background on my macro approach thus far to illustrate where I’m coming from.
1.1 Macro history
I’m an amateur wildlife photographer that takes on a diversity of natural subjects, anything goes. You can get an idea of my obsession with biodiversity from this coverage of our trip to Colombia in 2018:
In recent years I’ve favored mostly closeup photography over bigger wildlife. About 90% of my photography concerns arthropods, fungi and the occasional plant. I photograph them using my AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED lens on a Nikon D850. More often than not, I don’t even use the lens at full 1:1 magnification, depending on the subject and situation.
My typical style in the field is naturalist-style closeup/macro photography under pressure. Meaning, to productively document a lot of species in a way that they are in focus, sharp, and have a usable depth of field.
It doesn’t necessarily push technical limits, it’s very much practical and about the subjects. I’m a small wildlife photographer that uses magnification as a means to an end.
1.2 Entering extreme macro photography
Although I declared myself gear-complete two years earlier, I continue to follow camera news. Not with any envy, I truly am happy with my gear and honestly don’t need anything else. I’ve spent years strategically acquiring it, and now it’s done and just a matter of using it.
Until there was this one moment of weakness. I couldn’t help but notice the excitement by some famous macro photographers regarding the Laowa 25mm f/2.8 2.5–5X Ultra-Macro lens.
I had been hearing about it for a while, and wasn’t tempted at first. But the seed was planted and growing slowly. The thing that ultimately pulled me in is the combination of capability and affordability. Given what this lens can do, and compared to typical prices for full frame lenses, it’s quite a deal.
So it was a why not buy. Experimental. I didn’t even put a lot of thought into how I’d use it. I already knew it wouldn’t be a productive field lens, and figured I could perhaps do some fun stuff within a controlled environment, for example our garden. Tiny bugs. Lichens. Seed pods. A lens to fool around with on the side, nothing else.
1.3 COVID-19
As COVID-19 hit the Netherlands just days after my first test shots with this lens, it became immediately clear that there wasn’t going to be a tropical trip anytime soon. Which means our small urban garden was to be seen as this year’s jungle. And as it’s quite a limited environment where I’ve photographed most critters many times, the only interesting angle remaining was to take the extreme macro route as the new main route. From toy lens to main lens.
The second impact COVID-19 has had on this journey is far sillier. The pandemic has forced me to work from home for about a year now. Which I do from our home office. I have a dedicated desk for work, which sits directly next to the section where I have my extreme macro setup.
As I go about my work day, I tend to look at it a lot. There isn’t much else to look at, especially in audio-only meetings. So I’m spending hundreds of hours just staring at a bunch of gear. An unstoppable process kicks in where the mind analyzes and improves it without me commanding it. And that’s how it all got so out of hand. Just because I sat next to it.
So that’s the backstory of an extreme extreme macro setup. I let go where I normally wouldn’t. And I don’t care, not this year. When you do something ridiculous, at least do it properly ridiculous.
Note: the term ‘extreme macro’ has no hard definition, but general consensus is that it involves any magnification beyond normal macro (1:1). Some say it does not include the microscopy range, which roughly starts at 10:1, others do not make this distinction. In any case the term ‘Larger than life’ applies. Beyond 1:1, the projection of the subject on the sensor is larger than the physical size of the subject itself.
1.3 This article
Before we dig in, I want to clarify the goals of this article, which are multiple:
- To document the setup. The great thing about the extreme macro community is that people constantly compare and share setups, innovating collectively. As such, it’s very common when sharing any photo to get questions about one’s setup. This article will be a detailed reference of my particular setup that I can simply send people to.
- To explain extreme macro photography. In particular to people completely unfamiliar with it. It’s obviously not going to be a full course, but as I build up and explain each piece of the setup thoroughly, any poor soul making it to the end of the article should have a pretty good idea of how this hobby works. And not only that, they will also be able to understand other setups. Extreme macro setups look like intimidating monsters of complexity to the newcomer. I want to change that by writing the article I wish I had one year ago.
- To share ideas. To people already experienced in extreme macro photography (or more experienced than me, which would be most people), I imagine big parts of this article being nothing new. For that particular audience, I’d say the most interesting bits would be the flexcage idea, the choice of lighting, background control and the system of systems approach. I’ll clearly label each section so that it’s easy to skip to relevant parts.
Disclosure: I’ll name all parts and products, but am in no way affiliated with any vendor nor do I make a penny from this.
Finally, I’m fully aware that this is not a cheap setup. This is in no way a statement of vanity, I truly appreciate how innovative the extreme macro community is in coming up with low cost solutions. Therefore, for each choice I will critically assess the value of it and point to alternatives if I know any. This setup comes without pretense, it’s just one of a million ways to do things. I’ve also made mistakes, those too I will richly document. There is no agenda.
1.4 Table of Contents
Here’s an index of the chapters that hopefully help navigate this massive article:
- Chapter 1: Introduction (this chapter)
- Chapter 2: The room
- Chapter 3: The camera
- Chapter 4: Lenses and magnification
- Chapter 5: Macro rail
- Chapter 6: Free format focus stacking
- Chapter 7: Horizontal stand
- Chapter 8: Flexcage
- Chapter 9: Mounting arms
- Chapter 10: Flash
- Chapter 11: Continuous light
- Chapter 12: Background control
- Chapter 13: Monitor
- Chapter 14: Conclusion
We do have some ground to cover it seems. Let’s start. 🚀
Chapter 2: The Room
Before we talk of any gear, we need to find our blank sheet, our place to do extreme macro focus stacking.
2.1. Space requirements
Extreme macro focus stacking does not require a huge amount of space, it can be done on a small section of a kitchen table or even on the floor. However, when you advance in this hobby, it is most helpful to have a permanent space for it. In my case, I dedicated one section of a desk to it, the total desk structure (L-shaped) consisting of three parts:
A small desk like this is plenty of space for the setup itself. In addition, you need some storage space for the various attributes you will inevitably collect: entomology tools, diffusers, cables, all kinds of small supplies.
This is workable and enough. If I’d dream of a perfect space, I’d have a dedicated small room with a table in the middle so that you can access everything from every angle. I don’t have that kind of space so this will do.
2.2 Vibration
With extreme macro focus stacking, you take a series of photos (a stack) of a subject at high magnification. As this process is in progress, there is no tolerance for any movement.
A humming electronic device on the same surface may cause micro vibrations. The laundry machine next door or even a heavy truck driving by may cause enough vibration to ruin the stack.
The best way to go about it, is to just test it. Put your most sensitive body part on the surface and check for vibrations. I mean your fingertips, obviously.
Or, point your camera at a subject at your maximum magnification and inspect live view. Even better, use your camera’s HDMI port to project it on a large monitor. Do nothing and just watch, you’ll be able to see the smallest of vibrations. Walk in the room and see the effect directly. Power off devices to see if it makes a difference. This way, you can easily discover sources of vibration.
Within my range of magnification, which is 1:1 to 5:1 and occasionally 7:1, vibration isn’t much of an issue at all in my room. One obvious change I needed to make was to move over my big desktop machine to another desk section. I still had remaining devices on the desk that I couldn’t move (such as a NAS), so I stuck some thick silicone pads on the underside:
These pads are normally used by people who keep telling themselves they have super human hearing, eliminating any vibration produced by their amps. So I guess that must mean they’re really good.
That’s all I did to combat vibration. People using much higher magnifications may need to take more extreme measures. Only solve a problem you actually have, so test first.
When you get to the point where you no longer can take away sources of vibration, there’s still techniques to overcome it:
- Fast shutter speed. Throw so much (flash)light at the subject that it allows for a shutter speed that is fast enough to freeze the subject despite the vibration. Perhaps 1/250s to 1/500s. The fastest 5:1 shot I’ve ever done was 1/1600s. I produced a flash light bulb so intense that a few years from now, as this light finally arrives at an alien planet several light years away, it will be perceived as a supernova event. Any of their plans to travel to Earth canceled.
- Slow shutter speed. The opposite approach is to use a multi-second exposure time, the idea being that a brief vibration as part of a long stretch of time does not register. I’m unsure if this works if the vibration is constant, probably not.
Other common techniques related to the problem of vibration:
- The mechanical shutter of your camera will cause a lot of vibration so it is strongly recommended to use the electronic shutter. On my camera, it’s called Silent Live View Photography. When enabled, there is no mirror or shutter slapping and the process of taking a photo is entirely silent.
- Lock down the subject. I’ve made the mistake of having a subject somewhat loosely pinned. Vibrations, air flow or simply gravity may reposition it slightly during the stack, ruining it. A popular method to overcome this is to super glue the subject to a needle.
- Separate the rail from the specimen holder. The idea being that the automated macro rail vibrates as it moves, triggering subject vibration. I’m personally not following this advise as I figured out that the rail does indeed create a 0.5s vibration of the subject. Instead of separating the subject, I’m simply adding a wait time between shots. This works if the subject is properly locked down.
2.3 Air flow
Your extreme macro setup should not be in a place of massive air flow such as under an AC or next to an open window or ventilation shaft.
Other than that, I concluded that normal airflow found in any room to not be an issue at my level of magnification. If you insist, you can eliminate air flow altogether. I’ve seen people build tent-like structures around their setup, eliminating both air flow and dust.
2.4 Temperature
A normal room temperature will do. Cooler is better than hotter. Weird things happen at high magnifications. You’ll soon come to the realization that there’s no such thing as stable. Reality is inherently unstable at the physical level. A flower you just picked from the garden may move on its own during a stack regardless of your setup choices. Even an old insect specimen you kept in the freezer for months may still move.
It’s not often a problem, but more likely to occur in a very hot room. I guess that’s because molecules move faster at higher temperatures.
Another small reason to favor a cool room is that electronic devices sensitive to overheating won’t overheat as early. For example your camera sensor or some LED lights.
Both issues are a stretch though, normal conditions are just fine.
2.5 Stray light
Not a problem for me, but mentioning it for the sake of completeness. When you use long exposure times, your camera’s sensor may pick up unwanted ambient light from the room. As such, the ability to block ambient light altogether can be useful. Which could be as simple as closing the curtains.
It’s not relevant for me as both my flash and LED approaches easily overpower any ambient light. I don’t use very long exposure times. UV photography at high magnification being the very niche exception.
As part of this article, I will generously include a tutorial on extreme macro UV photography. Don’t do it. You’ve reached the end of the tutorial.
2.6 Electricity
Not a requirement, just a tip. Every component in my setup (camera, macro rail, lights, monitor) can run cable free and on battery power but I prefer to run everything on AC power. It eliminates any kind of battery stress.
I bought a power strip dedicated to just my extreme macro setup. It has all kinds of adapters and chargers permanently plugged in. The power strip is off when not in use, which is most of the time, so no electricity is used.
When I start a session, I flip the switch and everything has unlimited power. Nothing runs out. A great peace of mind.
Any power strip will do but I insist you use one that is grounded and protected (surge protection). Don’t expose your expensive gear to a crappy electricity setup. Case in point, our previous cat once peed directly into a power strip, short circuiting half the house. You can’t make this up, but his name was Spyke. He was fine by the way, pretty indifferent about the ordeal.
2.7 Cleaning
No specific advise here, just a thing to keep in mind. Whatever place you use for extreme macro photography, consider that you regularly need to clean the space as well as the setup itself.
Chapter 3: The Camera
3.1 Camera requirements
Extreme macro focus stacking can be done with any camera system supporting interchangeable lenses. Most often they are APS-C or full frame camera systems, either DSLR or mirrorless. Possibly you can even do it on other camera systems, for as long as you can achieve a particular magnification.
Some aspects of the camera you use that are relevant to extreme macro photography:
- Specifically for the practice of focus stacking, all automatic functions of the camera should be disabled. You can’t let the camera decide on ISO, shutter speed, aperture or white balance at all as this could mean the camera decides differently between individual shots, ruining the consistency of the stack.
- It has to be mountable. Almost every camera will have a female thread in the bottom.
- When using an automated macro rail, you need a way to trigger the shutter automatically. This is done using either a shutter release cable or via the camera’s USB/Data port, when controlling it from a computer. Needless to say, your camera needs to have such ports.
- A HDMI port is useful if you want to project live view on an external monitor.
Any DSLR or mirrorless system meets these requirements, they are all standard features.
3.2 Using a DSLR
One downside of a DSLR specifically is that focus stacking will add a lot of shutter actuations, possibly reducing the life span of that component. You can always replace the shutter when the time comes, but it’s something to keep in mind in particular when usage is frequent and stacks are deep. It may also affect resell value, if you care about that.
3.3 Camera strap
The little cord with red button as seen on the chapter photo is part of a Peak Design camera strap. It seems almost everybody in the community uses them. It de-clutters your setup. A normal camera strap gets in the way and can even get stuck in a macro rail when not careful. Reattaching the actual strap is as simple as sliding the button into the holder. Well recommended.
3.4 Powering your camera
A word on how to power your camera, specifically for Nikon. The D850 is known for having excellent battery life performance. When traveling, I add even more juice by means of a battery grip, and this way can shoot for days.
This performance falls apart though when using live view, which is what you will use constantly. Battery life may be some 60–90 minutes and for some of my older batteries, as little as 40 minutes. You constantly have this feeling of scarcity and things running out. To resolve that, I invested in this:
To explain the combination: the EP-5B is the dummy battery and connector in the top. It’s shaped like a real battery to make it fit in your camera but contains no charge. It does have electric contacts to feed pass-through power.
The EP-5B connector goes into the EH-5D, the adapter. I don’t know anything about electricity but I imagine this adapter to be responsible for converting current from AC to the level expected by the camera. From 220V to 12V or maybe 5V. Something like that.
Finally, there’s the country-specific plug. The confusing thing is that product photos of the EH-5D do not suggest it’s included, but I can confirm it is included. This still leaves two individual products to buy, the EP-5B and the EH-5D.
If you will, don’t wait too long. This is a pretty obscure product so few places have it in stock. I got mine at the Dutch Nikon site upon request, as nobody else had it. This component is normally used for time-lapse photography.
You’ll notice it’s absurdly expensive. I cannot emphasize enough how this would be the very last component to look for cheaper alternatives, unless you have a deep understanding of the component involved. You would not be the first to destroy your camera by feeding it too much power. This can even happen with a rogue third party battery unrelated to AC. Your call, but I did my job of warning you.
3.5 Live view expiration
Another tip for Nikon shooters. Live view will auto shutdown after x minutes. This has scared the absolute crap out of me numerous times as it violently closes the shutter whilst I was working with a delicate subject. You can disable this timeout in the menu. The menu place and name may differ between cameras, so do look it up for your camera.
Chapter 4: Lenses and magnification
Lenses, along with the choice of lighting, are the most complex choice to make in any extreme macro setup. The goal is to achieve the magnification you need at the optical quality you desire or can afford. There are several ways to achieve high magnifications:
- Just buy a macro lens.
- Use extensions tubes on an existing lens or combine with a macro lens.
- Reverse an existing prime lens with an adapter ring.
- Use an add-on or conversion lens on top of an existing lens.
- Combine a teleconverter with a macro lens.
- Use microscopy objectives on a tube lens.
- Use scanner or industrial lenses on a tube lens or other mounting option.
4.1 Which lens approach to use
Although I only have real world experience with the simplest option, just buying a macro lens, I’m still going to try and bring some structure into the dizzying amount of choices:
- If you already have a prime lens, extension tubes or reversing the lens are likely the most affordable option. I’ve seen people produce excellent results with it, so it’s worthwhile to consider if budget is tight or if you’re not yet sure if you want to commit to extreme macro long term.
- Buying an extreme macro lens I consider to be a sweet spot for many people, as it ticks a lot of boxes. It’s hassle-free, fit-for-purpose, optical quality is good to excellent, they can be used in the field, and they are increasingly affordable.
- When very high magnification is required (10:1 and higher), microscopy objectives are a main choice. Yet they are also used at lower magnifications. It’s hard to pin down this choice as it’s an entirely separate world of objectives where both cost and optical quality are very variable. I have no experience with this option, so this article won’t help in that regard.
4.2 Magnificent magnification
Other than budget and ease of use, magnification is likely a decisive factor in your choice of lens. When new to higher magnifications, it may not be intuitive to understand how much magnification you need. In this section I’ll give some examples to get an idea of what high magnification does to real world subjects.
The above mantis has a total length of 3.8 cm. A decent size for an insect. This photo is at 2.5:1 magnification and as you can see, only half the insect fits the frame. Additional magnification is of course useful to close in on individual body parts:
Above a 5:1 photo of a leg section. Not even that. Part of a leg section. Now consider that on a high MP camera, you still have cropping space:
It could use some sharpening, but sharpness isn’t the point here, magnification is. Another example:
Ignore the poor quality of this very dirty specimen, I only used it for some lighting tests. This is a Carpenter bee, comparable in size to a bumble bee. Note how at 5:1, its head doesn’t even fit the frame. Crop:
As you can see, 5:1 already is quite a high magnification for a lot of subjects. You could argue that these insects are fairly large. Agree. This one is not:
This springtail is a mere 1.5mm in size. 25 times smaller than the mantis. And we can still capture meaningful details. This is a 4:1 shot, pretty deeply cropped. This creature is so tiny that most people spend an entire lifetime unaware of it even existing. Note the mite next to it at 0.1mm, on its back.
Hopefully, this small tour gives an idea of what the range 2.5:1 to 5:1 allows for. The thing with increasing magnification further is that it also magnifies two particular problems:
- Technical challenges, such as dealing with vibration, become greater.
- Finding suitable subjects or parts of subjects can be tricky.
So it depends on your subjects. I’d advise to use the lowest high magnification you require, as those solutions are typically the easiest to use.
The way magnification is perceived and experienced does not seem entirely linear. Working with 1:1 macro for many years, first experiencing 2:1 is a shock. Access to a new world. Yet for reasons I can’t explain, 3:1 to 5:1 does not feel like opening yet additional new worlds at every step. Which is to say that despite the low number, 2:1 is no joke. Don’t overestimate your magnification needs.
4.3 LAOWA 25mm f/2.8 2.5–5X Ultra Macro
In this section I’ll cover some basics about my choice of extreme macro lens. You’ll find far better reviews elsewhere, so this is just a summary.
In terms of capability, this lens is unique. In the Nikon world, I don’t know of any other lens to offer this magnification range. In the Canon world, there’s the legendary MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1–5x Macro Photo.
The Canon lens is old (1999) yet still stands its ground. Furthermore, its main advantage in this comparison is that it also covers the incredibly useful 1:1 to 2.5:1 range. This versatility does mean its a much bigger lens, and more than twice as expensive. Optically, both lenses are comparable in quality, some reviews claiming the Laowa has a minor edge.
The Laowa is tiny, built like a tank and very narrow, which is intentional as this allows for more space for lighting between the lens and subject. Useful, given the very short focusing distance.
Given capability (magnification), optical quality and price, I find it an excellent choice, if not the only choice for Nikon. But it’s not all roses:
- This lens has no aperture coupling. On almost any lens, aperture only closes based on your selected value when you take the actual shot. This is so you can compose and focus wide open, allowing in enough light for a bright viewfinder. With this lens, as magnification and/or aperture values increase, the viewfinder becomes ever darker during composition and focusing. So you need a (strong) focus light to see anything at all. On the macro rail, this is easy to solve, it’s mostly an issue in the field.
- This lens has no infinity focus or focus ring. This is my biggest issue with the lens. The only way to focus with this lens is at exactly one fixed distance from lens to subject, hence focusing becomes an exercise in moving forward and backward. This is impractical in almost every situation. Handheld in the field, focusing means moving yourself forward and backward, which is far more difficult than standing still and moving a focus ring. When using a tripod without a macro rail, you’ll have to move the tripod itself to focus, which is near impossible by this tiny amount so you need that rail. Even when focus stacking on an automated macro rail it’s annoying as hell. Any composition or magnification change means moving the rail position. You also cannot easily preview the depth of your subject, as this too requires constant moving of the lens.
- This lens has no EXIF chip. Which I admit is a minor issue, but still annoying. After taking a photo, I have no idea which magnification or aperture was used unless I write it down.
The above downsides likely are the reason the lens is affordable, but maybe some features simply aren’t possible at this magnification, I’m unsure.
Above is Laowa’s solution to the dark viewfinder problem. I made the mistake of buying it, and suggest you don’t:
- The light it produces is ugly yellow, not neutral.
- There is zero brightness control, only blinding max level, spooking of any live subject.
- If not spooked off, the subject burns alive as this light gets crazy hot. It’s a MacDonald's hot coffee lawsuit in the making.
- It requires an external power source, somewhat understandable.
- Flooding a subject with light from the front is usually not a good idea in any case.
To conclude on this lens, I’m personally using it only for extreme macro focus stacking indoors, not as a field lens. As such, it’s excellent. The only strong annoyance is the lack of a focus ring, as this makes me waste a lot of time and hampers the creative process. Time is valuable. When you run out of money, you’re broke. When you run out of time, you’re dead.
4.4 LAOWA 100mm f/2.8 2X Ultra Macro APO Lens
I told you things got out of hand. I’ve used my Nikon 105mm 1:1 for 8 years, and now in the time frame of a few months, I went from 1 to 3 macro lenses.
I am severely critical of camera gear, the type of person to expect military grade quality and to call out any flaw without reservation. But I must admit defeat here.
This lens’ versatility (range), stunning optical quality and all-metal build quite likely makes it the best macro lens in its range. To deliver this combination at such relatively low price (for a full frame lens) really is a steal. This lens does not require justification, you should justify instead why you don’t have it.
In comparison to the previous Laowa discussed, it has aperture coupling. So you can compose and focus in a viewfinder that is bright.
More importantly, it has infinity focus. It solves every troublesome scenario I touched upon earlier:
- In the field, I can stabilize my body in a position trained to do, and focus precisely by just turning the focus ring. Vastly superior to moving myself forward and backward.
- On a tripod, you don’t have to move the entire tripod (or rail) just to focus.
- On an automatic macro rail, I can easily focus and preview an entire subject by just turning a ring, instead of awkwardly moving the rail position every single time.
And not just that, being able to focus from any distance also means you can use it in ways common for handheld macro field photography. You can take a shot from quite some distance, get closer to the subject and take a shot at 0.5x magnification, get even closer, and so on. There is no minimum magnification. It’s 2:1 and anything before it. You can even use it as a portrait lens.
The only thing lacking is auto focus and stabilization. Which I do find very useful, in particular in the range just before 1:1. In case those features ever get added, it would become the ultimate macro lens. I’d instantly buy it again, no matter its cost.
Venus Optics, if you’re reading along, do it. Make that holy grail of a macro lens. It would make virtually all other macro lenses obsolete.
Anyway, to me this lens has a few purposes:
- For extreme macro focus stacking, in the 1:1 to 2:1 range.
- For selective field usage in a controlled setting (i.e. garden)
- For all-round field usage it still needs to compete with the Nikon. In particular during travel, I cannot revisit a subject and have only little time to spend per subject. If I cannot achieve a similar keeper rate as with the Nikon (that does auto focus and has VR), the Nikon will still win. Time will tell.
Chapter 5: Macro rail
Out of all the equipment that goes into an extreme macro focus stacking setup, the automatic macro rail must be the most foreign and scary component to the newcomer. Unlike a camera, lens or light, you can’t really relate to it. I’ll dedicate this chapter to removing these insecurities.
Above is a WeMacro automatic rail. It’s small, simple and fairly affordable (~300$ + import duties) compared to other options. This machine is not complex. You mount your camera on the platform, and the machine moves the entire platform forward or backward by a specific amount, called a step size. The black block on the left contains the engine, which turns the long screw, and this moves the platform. The outer silver bars guide the movement of the platform.
The smallest step size this rail can handle is 1 micron (1 μm). Figuring out which step size you need requires no math, you can just look it up based on your magnification and aperture:
As an example, the Laowa at its maximum 5:1 magnification at f/2.8, would mean a step size of 39 μm. The rail could do steps 39 times smaller than that, so it’s highly precise. To continue the example, if I’d maintain 5:1 yet use f/5.6, step size doubles. Which means I need only half the steps (and thus photos) to cover the same total depth.
The interplay of variables is fairly simple. The higher the magnification, the smaller the step size. The higher the aperture value, the bigger the step size. By this logic, you could be tempted to use a very high aperture value as this leads to a short stack (low amount of photos), but optical limits apply. Due to light diffraction, image quality degrades the smaller the aperture (high f number) gets.
5.1 Effective aperture
Here is one mathematical formula to be aware about:
Effective Aperture = Lens Aperture x (1 + Magnification)
When you’re already familiar with aperture in conventional photography, you know that a higher value means less light enters the lens…
…whilst simultaneously increasing the depth of field (DOF). At higher magnifications, the effect of losing light escalates. Example:
At 5:1 magnification, f/8, the effective aperture becomes 8 x (1 + 5) = f/48. f/16 is commonly used in macro photography which would lead to 16 x (1+5) = f/96.
These are ridiculous values (hopefully) never used in conventional photography. Compare how little light would enter the lens at f/96 compared to the reference photo showing f/8.
Whilst you don’t need to know this formula by heart, it serves as an explanation. When you look at extreme macro setups, people come up with the craziest of solutions to deliver light. It seems quite counter intuitive that a tiny 1 cm subject is lit by 3 speedlights or extremely powerful continuous lights, but now you know the reason: extremely little light will enter the lens. To compensate for that reality, you put a lot of light very close to the subject.
Note that light intensity required depends on shutter speed. When using long exposure times, very simple lights will do.
5.2 Macro rail connections and cables
Now that we know that an automatic macro rail is a fairly simple machine, let’s explore how it’s controlled.
- The silver box is the controller, the brains. As the name suggests, it controls the WeMacro rail. It also contains a Bluetooth chip to connect to it from the mobile app.
- The controller has a power cable, not shown in the photo, and an on/off switch.
- The cable in the bottom right is used to connect the controller to the rail, this feeds the rail power as well as instructions.
- The cable below the silver box is a shutter release cable. Beyond just moving the rail, you also want it to take a photo at each step. The shutter release cable goes from the controller into your camera’s shutter release connection to trigger the making of a photo.
- Alternatively, there’s the USB cable. Here you connect the controller to your PC, and then use software to control the controller.
This last scenario is what I’m using, and as it’s such an excellent workflow, I’ll go into a bit more detail in the next section.
5.3 Wemacro + Helicon Remote
As said, I’m not using the shutter release cable. Instead, the controller is connected to my PC using USB. In addition to that, the camera itself is also connected to my PC using USB.
With this setup, I’m on my PC using the software Helicon Remote. I’m directly looking at the live view feed of the camera (which is not the same as its HDMI feed) on my monitor. Whilst live view resolution is very low for Nikon cameras, I can see the subject clear enough and on a big screen.
Helicon Remote detects the WeMacro rail after a one-time installation of its driver, which you can find on the WeMacro website.
Next, directly from Helicon Remote I can move forward and backward the rail to get the subject in focus and composed. Whilst doing this, focus peaking overlays with color which part of the subject is in focus. The high level process is as simple as this:
- Move the rail to the start of the stack, mark as A (start) in Helicon.
- Move the rail to the end of the stack, mark as B (end) in Helicon.
- Dial in the correct step size (based on the lookup table shared earlier)
- Hit start
Don’t cause a stir and wait for it to finish. Even better, when the stack is done, the result will automatically be launched into another program, Helicon Focus, which is responsible for combining the individual photos into a single one. And the single file is a RAW file, with full dynamic range preserved.
A few more benefits of the Helicon software:
- Besides controlling the rail, you can also control exposure settings of your camera. You can trigger a test shot and see the result. Next, you may conclude shutter speed needs to be tuned. You change it directly in Helicon and do a test shot again. You’re not touching the camera.
- Both single shots and the stack shots you can configure to directly be dropped into a folder on your PC. So there’s no copying or transferring of files for you to do at all. Again, you’re not interacting with the camera itself in any way at all.
- For Helicon Focus specifically, the Pro version has a massive benefit should you be so lucky to have a good GPU in your PC. It will make use of it and reduce the software stacking process time from potentially an hour or more, to just minutes.
I love this workflow.
Alternatively, you can also use the WeMacro mobile app to control the rail. It works, but I can’t be bothered as the Helicon workflow is superior.
I had the above workflow working in less than an hour from opening the WeMacro box. I cannot emphasize enough how easy it is to set this up, there’s nothing to be intimidated about.
Note: a popular alternative for Helicon Focus is Zerene Stacker. Some say it leads to better results but I’ve not been able to confirm that from my testing. And as its far slower and doesn’t support RAW, I’m sticking to Helicon. I recommend to test yourself using the trial versions, and make up your own choice.
5.4 WeMacro mounting options
The WeMacro rail as a whole can be mounted to pretty much anything, here it is on a tripod:
I rarely use it this way, only when I have odd positioning needs.
In the above case, I collected some insects from the pond into a petri dish. I used the rail on a tripod to make the odd angle.
The WeMacro rail can also be mounted on a stand, which I’ll cover in a while.
Finally, some people use the screw holes to secure it permanently to large blocks of wood or metal for extreme stability.
5.5 Other macro rails
I only have experience with the WeMacro rail, which seems the cheapest of automatic rails, even though nothing about it feels or looks cheap. The only cheaper option is a DIY approach where you buy the individual parts. My understanding is that a macro rail like this really is a repurposing of a fairly standard component used in manufacturing, a stepper engine.
Anyway, the only thing this rail needs to do for me is to move by the specified amount. And it does that. So I’ve not had any reason to look into the more expensive rails. Based on just reading, here’s some aspects I hear people talk about regarding other rails:
- Some need an even smaller step size, we’re probably talking about double digit magnifications here: 20:1, 50:1, 100:1.
- Some prefer a more advanced control box that has physical buttons to program the rail without requiring software or a mobile app.
- Some need a longer travel length (total length of rail screw).
Besides considering more sophisticated options, we can also do the opposite. Extreme macro focus stacking can also be done with a low cost manual rail. Obvious downsides are that it is much more time consuming, and precision will become a problem at higher magnifications. I’d estimate it can be done up to 3:1, beyond that you require super human will power. I also imagine you need to be retired to have this amount of time on your hands.
I’m not even joking. This has to be the ultimate retirement hobby. If you have no idea how to fill a day, this is the hobby to go for. Next, when your offspring comes for a pity visit, you show them the door. No time.
5.6 It’s still legal to not stack
Here I want to warn for a particular pitfall. Once you have an automatic macro rail, depth of field becomes unlimited. A natural tendency develops to stack deeply. You’ll soon almost forget that you can still do single shots as well as shallow stacks.
The above is a very shallow stack of just a few photos. It feels as a very conventional 1:1 macro photo yet it is a 5:1 photo. Personally, I think the typical 1:1 look of macro is gorgeous, whereas a stack that is too deep can look unnatural. It lacks a gradual transition into the out-of-focus plane. It all depends on the subject of course, all I’m saying is to be aware of the pitfall, just because you can stack doesn’t mean you must.
Chapter 6: Free format focus stacking
We have a place to do extreme macro focus stacking, a camera, lens, and rail. With these components in place we can begin.
We also need a lighting solution, but this will be covered in a later chapter at length.
I’m calling extreme macro focus stacking with these base components “free format” to illustrate that each component in the setup is disconnected and has its own freedom of movement. The entire rail can be moved, the specimen holder, the light, a background card, etc. They are separate components on a surface, which you can move around and position as you please.
Above I placed the subject in a rolled up leaf. There’s always a way to find a support base for such scenarios when all components are independent.
Above I photographed this mosquito pupa straight through a glass.
Clearly, this free format approach is highly flexible. It can deal with almost any situation, and I’ve used this approach for several months.
And still I got fed up with it. The above conceptual photo does not reflect reality. In reality, there’s a bunch of cables, the flash unit would be almost touching the lens and one might have an additional mini tripod for the background. You may even have two flash units. And a paper cup as a diffuser. Or a reflector.
There’s a fierce competition for space which means making changes becomes stressful. The mini tripod with specimen holder shown above is popular (yet no longer sold), but far from ideal. Imagine having everything set up and then concluding that you need to position the subject 0.1mm higher. A hard thing to do in itself, but it also may mean moving other components out of the way, and starting over. Or, you may bump or touch them, displacing them.
There’s ways to improve. The specimen holder can be replaced with a device allowing for more structural positioning:
Note: don’t buy the above item unless you’re at microscopy level magnifications. It’s actually too fine in movement for lower magnifications.
Still, I found it cost me too much time and stress to position all components in order to come to a composition.
A stand, discussed in the next chapter, solves this. Before you consider it, I’d like to drop a warning. Once you get a stand, you’re quite likely to gear up further. You will want to make optimal use of it. It has been a turnaround point in my journey that triggered a whole bunch of additional improvements.
I regret none of them, quite the opposite. But if you want to keep things in check, including your expenses, not making this step could be a wise choice. I would advise to first start without a stand and see how far it gets you. A stand doesn’t make better photos, it adds convenience, control and productivity.
Chapter 7: Horizontal stand
A stand it is, because we don’t keep things in check.
The Vertical Stand 2.0 is an excellent companion product to the WeMacro rail. The reason it’s called “2.0” is that its first version did not officially support a horizontal layout, whilst its second version does supply the parts to achieve that.
In its vertical layout, the camera, rail and lens point downwards, whilst the subject is at the bottom, and positioned using a 4-way platform. Note how the base plate has a series of holes around the edges. These are 1/4" threads, allowing you to mount flexible arms or other accessories.
Some people prefer the vertical layout, some prefer the horizontal layout. It’s largely a subjective choice, where I favor the horizontal orientation.
Above is how you would receive the product. Looks like a lot, but there’s a clear manual and online instruction video that explains how to assemble the kit. It’s so simple that even I managed to do it.
Note the two clamps on the bar. This is how you mount the WeMacro rail. You can vary the position of the clamps based on the length of your lens. The other great thing is that unmounting is as easy as opening the two clamps. So in case where we have positioning needs not suitable for this setup, we can remove the entire rail, camera and lens combination in seconds and use the free format approach discussed earlier.
Another point of interest are the rubber feet, which are threaded. If the stand is a bit wobbly, you just turn the correct rubber foot, and this way make it fully stable.
The device at the end of the stand is a 4-way platform. To understand what 4-way means, reason from the perspective of the lens, looking at the subject frontally. The black knob at the end (facing us) moves the specimen holder up and down (which are 2 ways). The nob on the underside (barely visible here) moves it left and right (which are also 2 ways). Combined, these are the 4 ways to move the specimen holder. Sometimes 4-way is called XY. A XYZ platform would add a 3rd dimension of movement: front and back, meaning towards the lens or away from it. We don’t need that as the rail will make that movement.
See above. I made two small modifications to the specimen holder. I added a mini ball head in between the 4-way platform and the specimen holder. This allows for free format tilting of the subject. Whereas the 4-way platform gets the subject in the frame, the ball head allows control of the angle of the subject in any direction. Any mini ball head will do, as it only needs to hold a fraction of a gram typically.
The second modification is that I painted the crocodile clip black. Normally, you should avoid having it in the frame altogether, but sometimes you can’t. In that case, you don’t want a highly reflective surface ruining things. I used an anti reflective paint that came in a spray can, normally used to paint stoves and barbecues. It will absolutely never come off.
See above. The only criticism I have about the stand as a whole is that the platform, which is pretty bulky, is secured with a single screw as seen above. It’s kind of a hack. The consequence is that as you use the 4-way knobs over time, the screw loosens and maligns both the horizontal and vertical axis. This doesn’t necessarily ruin any photos, but 4-way becomes a somewhat diagonal 4-way. So once in a while I need to re-align things. Somebody handy would probably have a fix for this.
Some people, or at least one, don’t mount the platform at the end of the base, instead they mount it on the the extrusion bar. Here’s an example showing such variations. That post is also where I got the mini ball head idea.
And with that, our upgrade is complete:
From chaotic free format to structured and clean. The two arms mounted to the plate are SmallRig 2066 articulating arms.
In case you’re new to articulating arms, they’re awesome. The big knob in the middle locks or unlocks 3 joints in one go: the main joint itself where the knob is located, as well as the end of each leg section. They are more useful than the typical bendy arm as these allow you to easily make sharp corners. Sometimes they are also called “Magic” arms (Manfrotto) or “Universal” arms. Many people use them.
Anyway, with the stand assembled, a sense of relief came over me. I couldn’t do much with it immediately as my next work week started. Sitting next to it all week, I was all smug about it. I finally had it all figured out, and the setup was complete. I even kept making smartphone snaps of it for no reason but to congratulate myself.
And then one man ruined it all.
Chapter 8: The FlexCage
The man in question is Allan Walls. I discovered him far too late. I consider him to be the best (extreme) macro teacher around. For any possible extreme macro topic you can think of, there is a video. And each video discusses the topic at length, with clarity, and with empathy. It doesn’t assume a lot of prior knowledge. Pure excellence.
It was the above video that provided solution inspiration for a problem I subconsciously knew I had, but couldn’t articulate.
The idea is to build up a cage from tubes, providing a wide array of mounting points from any direction for whatever you need to mount. It’s in many ways superior to this:
My setup thus far was excellent for one particular popular recipe. Enclose the subject in a foam/paper cup, and then flash to the sides of it. This creates an all-around diffused light on the subject, clearly exposing all its details:
It generally works quite well, and some people exclusively use this approach and even build permanent structures for it.
But if you want more variable lighting, where you take control of distance and angles, the stand in its current form was lacking. There is no easy way to use the air column above it, to come down with a light nor is it straightforward to create backlight. Allan’s cage idea does enable all those things.
Instead of directly copying the approach, I created a variation of it, for two reasons:
- Although the cage might (barely) fit on my desk, I still consider it too large for my needs. In particular I don’t need it to be this wide.
- A cage effectively replaces the stand I just invested in, which I do like.
8.1 Flexcage
Meet the FlexCage:
I know, it doesn’t look much like a cage at all, but I’m keeping the name to credit the inspiration for it. And it does conceptually implement a cage.
Instead of dismissing the stand, I extended it. The two poles are Manfrotto 122B lighting stands. They are mounted to the base plate in a strategic position. The idea is of course that it provides a lot of possible mounting points, in particular vertical ones, but also horizontal ones at close distance.
What about the flex part?
The poles don’t need to be on the stand. You can take them off and put them anywhere. Hence, distance can be varied and the cage is virtual. In this example I mounted one pole to a Platypod. I already had it for another reason, but it serves this secondary purpose well for having a small footprint. It has a fair amount of forward tolerance yet little tolerance sideways. Should you want to go heavy duty:
Here the pole is mounted to a Manfrotto 003. It’s extremely strong and costs about $30. It does take up more space.
8.2 Anatomy of a lighting pole
In this section I’m going into more detail about the Manfrotto 122B and how I’m using it.
At 30$, it’s quite affordable. In the above photo you see it at 53cm of length. After unscrewing the black nob, an inner tube extends it to 84cm. In my photos it looks to be very tall, but it isn’t. It’s just the perspective of the photo.
I initially thought I didn’t need it to be extensible and figured to always use it at its shortest length. I was wrong. It’s actually a very useful feature:
See above. The left pole is fully extended. I use the extended state as a rest position. I normally have all kinds of arms and lights permanently attached to it. In its extended state, they are out of the way so I can work with the subject. When ready, I lower the pole, and fine-tune the position of lights. Awesome workflow.
The second reason the extension mechanism is useful is seen in the right pole. When unscrewing the knob, not only can you lift the extension section of the pole, you can also rotate it. The pole’s base stays in place at all times. Combined with an extension arm, this creates an excellent position for backlight, but you could also rotate it to the side to create more distance.
This is how the flexcage idea allows you to create mount points at any distance or angle, and with great ease. It is as small or as big as you require it to be.
Let’s discuss the extension arm, the black arm mounted to the top of the pole. I already owned them as part of the bigger Manfrotto articulating arms, so I repurposed them. At ~22 $, they are affordable. At the end of the pole, I added the Manfrotto 066, a double female adapter.
See above how the extension arm connects with the double female adapter. These components are designed to connect and are rock solid, so this is not some weird hack.
To round it off, I inserted a screw into the top opening which simply was a spare part from the WeMacro stand package. And on top of that, I store a magnet. I use the magnet for backgrounds, explained later.
Given that the extension arm isn’t really that long, you may wonder how it is helpful.
The above photo conceptually demonstrates its value, although poorly. This somewhat weird angle where the light is coming from behind the lens would be hard or impossible to achieve otherwise. The same goes for creating backlight at distance. Think of the extension arm as adding a significant amount of useful reach to the articulating arms.
To complete this section on the poles:
Here’s a ridiculous mod. The pole is black aluminum and quite shiny. As I have it positioned quite close to the subject, I wanted to avoid reflections. So I applied a material called Kyoto Fineshut to the bottom section of the pole. This material is absurdly anti-reflective.
Problem solved, but I wasn’t even sure it was a problem at all. I was just experimenting with extremely dark materials.
Chapter 9: Mounting arms
You can’t be serious, an entire chapter on arms?
Yep. They are important. Specifically in a cage-like setup the idea is that you do custom positioning for each and every subject, so you will be mounting, unmounting, changing angles and distances constantly. You’ll work a lot with the arms so it’s important to have a system that works well. Nobody talks about arms, so I will.
9.1 Clamp
This one is easy. The SmallRig 2058 is cheap yet flawless. It’s made of metal and has both 1/4" and 3/8" threads, allowing you to mount anything to it. Rubber padding on the inside avoids any scratches.
My favorite part is the thoughtful screw (in silver). In situations where you wouldn’t have the space to turn it, you still can. Because the handle itself is movable in place.
Get as many of these as you need mounting points. I have four.
9.2 Arm
Discussed earlier in the article, these too are a standard choice. They are fine. The only flaw is one commonly found in any arm system, and hard to solve:
You have something mounted to the end of the arm. You want to take it off or perhaps change its angle. So you apply some force to it. By doing that, you’re slowly unscrewing the other end of the arm, which goes into the clamp.
Strongly tightening the connection to the clamp helps, but you can’t take it too far. You don’t want to destroy the thread and you do not want it as tight as to be permanently stuck. I don’t have a solution for it, it’s just an observation.
Above is an alternative arm system, a Platypod Gooseneck. They are typically mounted on a Platypod base but as they have a 1/4" thread, they can be mounted to a clamp as well. These arms are excellent in being flexible yet rigid. They stay in place and don’t creep. Another cool feature is that they are stackable, the above photo shows two arms connected to each other.
For the purpose seen above, they are excellent. Attached to a clamp, they are very usable for light things, for example to hold a reflector or small light. For heavier stuff, this arm is annoying to use and not recommended. The problem I described earlier, the connection to the clamp slowly loosening as you work with the arm, is far bigger with this arm.
9.3 Quick release
This section is embarrassing, it reveals all kinds of flaws in my character. Luckily, I’ve arrived at an age where I no longer care and just laugh at myself.
The idea was simple. I’ll be having several arms, with things attached to the end of it. Typically, lights. I often need to take them off, usually to change the light shaper (diffuser, honey comb, etc), insert or remove a charging cable, etc. To do that, I need to unscrew the light as a whole. Sometimes this is impossible without first repositioning them as a big diffuser is attached and I can’t make the turn because it hits something else.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a small quick release system at the end of the arm? It would solve many problems:
- It’s simply a whole lot faster, no tedious unscrewing
- No more repositioning of clamps
- No force applied to the arm itself, so the problem of it unscrewing solved
I really only needed a small and simple one. How hard can it be.
I won’t name the above brand as it’s not my goal to bash them. My initial search landed me at products as seen above, in the price range below 15$. Some critical reviews (connection is wobbly) made me doubtful. I have a very low tolerance for crappy products. Basically, I think that metal products should be able to attend my funeral. The very point of metal is that it lasts, and that it is precise. If from an official product photo I can already see the flaws, I’m not sold.
So I was looking upwards, higher end.
Unsurprisingly, I arrived at the 30$ Smallrig option, which would go nicely with the Smallrig clamp and arm. I really thought I was spending big here for such a trivial functionality.
Narrator: he wasn’t spending big yet.
The idea here is that you permanently mount one half of the quick release system to your accessory. The ideal way to do that is via the hole seen in the above photo. For some reason I failed to secure it enough to the light. It was wobbly no matter what I tried.
Instead, I used an adapter screw (1/4" male to 1/4" male) on the top and mounted the light to it. A super secure connection, but the problem is that the light ends up in a random angle due to the thread. This is quite a petty issue I admit, but it really looks stupid to have the accessory aligned diagonally to the plate.
A far bigger issue is the actual releasing of the plate. It’s violent. Just like some reviewers, I cut myself. Twice. These plates lock extremely well. So well that unlocking them becomes a liability. The amount of force to apply is large and variable, so you never know what’s going to happen. It’s not consistent. Sometimes you’re ready to apply significant force, and it just flies off.
This product really does feature quick release. It’s definitely quick. It’s just not clear how much blood is spilled each time you try. It’s probably fine when your primary interest is a super strong lock, with only an occasional unlock.
I tried to just live with it, but ultimately couldn’t. It feels like I introduced a problem instead of solving one. And now I was in too deep to let it go.
I’ve spent untold hours reading reviews of similar products and realized what I asked for really isn’t that simple:
- When locked, the accessory attached to it should not wobble or creep.
- Yet it should be smooth to unlock, requiring little force.
- Ideally, it aligns along either the horizontal or vertical axis, not randomly.
- Ideally, it allows for manipulation (tilting) without it affecting the lock.
Consider that it needs to do all of the above whilst working with a fragile arm in mid-air, which is far more demanding compared to how a mini quick release is typically used.
Although the use case is different in the above video (monitor mount), the problem, journey and outcome are similar. Cycling through a series of crappy products to come to a single one that does it all.
It is shockingly expensive, at 100$. Yet it seems to have no match in the known universe. There’s even a few mini quick release systems of equal price, yet faulty. So I had the choice of ignoring the problem altogether, getting a crappy product that doesn’t solve it, or get this one. You know what happened.
Above is kind of a worst case situation with the largest light shaper attached to the light. Check out my luck:
The plastic ridge coming from the diffuser is how the light’s accessories are mounted to the light itself. They are placed in part over the light. That area needs to stay clear from the AtomX mounting plate, otherwise I can’t change accessories. The distance between the end of the accessory connection and the AtomX plate quite literally is zero. An exact fit. Even better, the AtomX end of the mounting plate has a protruding ridge that is gripping exactly into the ridged structure of the light itself. What are the odds?
The price is a bitter pill to swallow. It took me a while. As in, about 1 minute. The first time I unmounted and remounted a light using this system, the steep price was forgotten. Working with the arms is now an incredibly smooth ride:
- Both unmounting and mounting a light takes near zero effort or force, and does nothing to the arm itself, it just stays in place.
- When mounted, it’s rock steady. No wobbling, no creeping.
- Since it’s not just a quick release but also a monitor mount, we get bonus features. I can rotate and tilt the light with a single finger, requiring no interaction with the arm, nor does it move the arm.
Not only do I find it worthwhile, it’s a solution that genuinely makes me happy. It has become one of the goals of the setup, making it a pleasure to work with. Extreme macro isn’t exactly pleasurable in its process, if I can take away the tedious parts, I will. Not only does it save time, it makes it much more likely that you artistically experiment when barriers are lowered. If it sucks to change a light or light shaper, you’re less likely to do it. It hampers the creative process.
And that is why a seemingly unimportant component got its own chapter. The flexibility of the poles, combined with excellent arms, very much go hand in hand.
Chapter 10: Flash
Although my setup will use continuous light instead of flash, I figured that for the sake of completeness, it’s good to say a few things about flash-based illumination. It has been part of my journey and I may still incidentally use it. Furthermore, this article is growing into a book worth of info, so it has to be included.
10.1 Flash or continuous light?
Depends on whom you ask. But there’s a few characteristics of both approaches that are not subjective.
One that clearly sticks out is that there is no match for the intensity of light that flash can deliver. During a brief flash burst, even a consumer speedlight may output the equivalent of a few hundred thousand lumen. There is no continuous light equivalent that wouldn’t set your house on fire.
Practically speaking, that means that flash is pretty much the only method in extreme macro able to deliver enough light for a fast shutter speed.
Well…kind of. If you’re willing to raise ISO a little, you can still get a decent shutter speed given powerful LEDs placed very close to the subject. I managed to get 1/250s at ISO 800 at 5:1. But overall, the point stands: flash wins when it comes to power.
The bigger question is whether you actually need a fast shutter speed. If everything is locked down and if nothing vibrates, one can just expose longer.
Yet I still do not believe that this equalizes flash and continuous light altogether. I can’t back it up with hard facts, but it does seem flash still has a small edge when it comes to image quality. Maybe it really is the shutter speed, less noise, or the quality of the light. I’m unsure, can’t put my finger on it. In any case I’ve seen incredible results produced with either method.
Where continuous light wins is in its ability to preview and control it. You can’t preview flash results, you have to take a test shot every single time. Flash also has the tendency to bounce around in unexpected ways, although technically this is of course true for any light.
Finally, flash outputs neutral light. It won’t have strange color casts found in some consumer grade LEDs.
10.2. Flash units
In my flash journey, I’ve never committed to the recommended setup, instead winged it with the single flash unit I already owned, a Nikon SB910. Still, to the newcomer it may be worthwhile to mention what the popular choice is.
Many people seem to be using Godox flash units, typically two, sometimes more. Although I currently do not own any Godox product, I love what they are doing. They are deeply challenging the establishment with very competitive prices whilst offering similar or even identical quality.
Anyway, the Godox pair along with a commander seems a proven recipe. It’s often used in combination with the paper cup diffuser method, where each of the two units flash to the side of the cup. Honestly, I don’t think that requires two units per se:
The above photo was taken with the paper cup approach with just one flash unit. You can even see the direction of the the entry light in the overexposure on the right, something I could have easily fixed in post processing, but somehow overlooked. If cost is an issue, the clever use of diffusers, reflectors or even mirrors may allow you to get away with using a single speedlight. You can also see a single light source as a strength, in case you’re into deeply dramatic shots:
Multiple speedlights likely have more value in a setup without the paper cup strategy. In that case, you may also want to look into flash light shapers, such as diffusers, barn doors, honey combs, the like. Many people make these themselves from materials commonly found around the house.
10.3 Controlling flash output
When focus stacking with flash, you should not use TTL flash mode. In TTL mode, light output may differ between shots, which is unwanted.
For some people this may mean that for the first time ever, they have to understand their flash’s manual mode. It’s not difficult. You put it in M mode, and select the power level, which works along a scale from 1/1 (max power) to typically 1/64 (lowest power). You keep taking test shots and work with the scale until the flash output is right.
The secondary control you have regarding light intensity landing on your subject is of course distance. The amount of light hitting your subject in relation to distance is bound by the Inverse-square law. As a simple way to remember it: Twice the distance, four times less light.
Practically, this means light has a strong falloff as you increase distance. And there’s a very common manifestation of this effect in macro photography: black backgrounds in cases where this was not your intention.
Some macro photos taken in the field in daylight appear as if they are shot at night. Only the subject is well exposed whilst the rest of the scene is largely dark. This is a direct result of light falloff. Visualized:
We have a flash light source (yellow) at 10 cm distance from a subject (green). A distance not uncommon in macro photography. The amount of light hitting the subject we consider our reference: 100%. As we double the distance to 20 cm, luminosity is a mere 25% compared to what hit the subject. Just 10 cm behind the subject, we already lost 75% of light. If we double distance again to 40 cm (30 cm behind the subject), just 6% of light remains compared to what landed on the subject.
That’s how you get unwanted dark backgrounds. And I suppose it’s also how you get wanted dark backgrounds.
10.4 Misfiring and overheating
When you do a stack, your flash unit needs to output the exact same amount of light for each photo of the stack. Some flash units are simply crappy and occasionally misfire. More commonly, a flash unit may reduce output because it’s protecting itself against overheating. The solution is fairly simple: add a wait time of a few seconds in between shots so that the unit can cool down.
10.5 Battery stress
When you use a flash unit intensely and repeatedly, you will be draining the batteries a lot. So you constantly have to manage it, replace them, possibly across multiple units. There’s a simple and highly recommended solution, a flash battery pack:
Godox also makes one. Such a battery pack has a large internal battery which you charge via AC. It will then have plenty of juice to do a long extreme macro session of several hours. This solution only works if your flash unit has an external power connection, so be sure to check that. Furthermore, your flash unit will still need to carry its normal batteries to power its LCD screen and zoom head, or at least mine did. The external power is exclusively used for outputting light.
Note: some modern high end speedlights now have their own Lion batteries, in that case you may not need a power pack.
When I used the power pack on my SB910, I came to a fascinating discovery. Without the battery pack, I did sometimes manage to stress the SB910 enough so that output became variable. It seemed to protect itself by reducing output. Clearly an overheating problem.
Wrong. The AA batteries (or possibly the capacitor) are the true bottleneck instead. With the battery pack connected, this limitation was fully removed. I fired 100 shots in a row at 1/1 power with a 0.5s wait time. Not only did the flash unit not overheat, its temperature (visible on the display) didn’t even move at all. According to the SB910 specifications, this is impossible, it has a far longer recycle time. But these specifications do not take into account a battery pack scenario.
I find that fascinating as it could mean that some people are adding quite a lot of wait time between shots that may not be needed.
10.6 Flash extender
Here’s a niche option to consider when you’re using a single flash unit. As your flash unit will be off camera, you typically need a commander unit to control it. Which will have batteries that can run out. Not a huge issue as they last pretty long, but if you insist on solving it:
The right part goes into your camera’s hotshoe whilst the flash unit will go into the left part.
10.7 Strobe?
Finally, I once seriously considered a strobe as an option. A strobe is AC powered, consistent, has a massive output and can be bought for as little as 200$, cheaper than most speedlights.
I ultimately decided against it. They are likely difficult to position and don’t add much value over a speedlight with a battery pack.
Chapter 11: Continuous light
Picking a continuous light solution can range from super simple to incredibly complex. Let’s first start simple.
A widely used solution is a series of inexpensive IKEA clip lights:
They’re popular for good reasons. They costs as little as 10$, run on AC power, have excellent arms that can easily be positioned, and the clamp allows for easy mounting. Minor drawback may be that they don’t necessarily output perfectly neutral light, but I suppose some white balance tweaking can resolve that. Furthermore, they aren’t supremely powerful so depending on magnification it may require longer exposures. Which in itself is not necessarily a problem, I’ve seen world class results using these lights.
So you may already be done here. Note that I did not use this solution myself, I’m merely passing on community consensus.
11.1 How to select a continuous light
If you were to look for alternatives, that are in whichever way better, things get very complex. There’s an absolute avalanche of LED products in the market and its quite hard to make sense of them. Worse, I’ve found that you can’t really go by reviews either. Some really poor products still seem to be getting 4+ star ratings.
In this pile of products may be your perfect one, but it’s hard to tell which one it is. Instead, I’ll offer some characteristics to judge a light by. I’ll leave it to you to weigh these aspects, as some characteristics may be unimportant to you:
- Price. Needs no explaining.
- Durability. Also obvious, but usually impossible to tell.
- Size. May be relevant to be able to accurately point light.
- The mounting system. Either the IKEA type of system that has its own clamp and arm, or just a light unit that you mount on your magic arms, in which case ideally it has a 1/4" thread.
- The light output. This will determine above all the shortest exposure time possible. It may be expressed as lumen, lux, or by power consumption (watt) and you can’t always fully trust the spec.
- Its power source. Whether it runs on AC, batteries, or can do both.
- Light temperature. Lights used for common indoor lighting often are too warm, but as said, this can be solved with white balance tweaking.
- Color accuracy. A pretty complex topic with lots of opinions and controversy. CRI (Color Rendition Index) expresses how accurately your (artificial) light source reveals color in comparison to how those colors would look under an ideal light source (daylight). High CRI lights are designed specifically for photography, and more expensive.
- Flickering. A bit of a stretch, but artificial lights can flicker. I’d expect this to not be an issue for still photography, but for videography it’s a common concern.
- Accessory support. In case you want to play around with light shapers attached to the light (diffusers, barn doors, etc.), some lighting systems offer a small ecosystem of such plugins. Alternatively, some you can make yourself.
- Mobility. Will the light be solely used for indoors extreme macro focus stacking or do you want the light to be portable, usable in other contexts? If portable, build quality and possible waterproofing can matter.
11.2 Evaluating the Adaptalux
In my own search for a good continuous lighting system, I initially arrived at this:
Importantly, this was at the very beginning of my journey, far before I had a stand, pole, and mounting arms. My requirements were different then. I used it mostly in the free format style of extreme macro photography. I had very high hopes for it, but ultimately it left me disappointed:
- The arms don’t stay in place, when you let go of them, they move on their own, so you constantly have to take that into account.
- With several arms mounted, it soon becomes a mess where you may unintentionally move one you just carefully positioned.
- The mount of the pod is in the worst possible place (at the end, diagonally) and made of plastic. I don’t care if the product is plastic, but connections should never be made of plastic. Build quality is poor across the board.
- The lights often flicker, and then stop flickering when you tap them, like some ancient shade-lamp. Cleaning the ports is the supposed solution.
- The part that mounts the pod to the hotshoe is to tight that I nearly destroyed my camera’s hotshoe getting it out again. It’s some 3D printed material. Again, use metal for any and all connections.
- Controls are weird, white buttons with white labels, and there is no on/off switch. Whoever started that trend: stop it.
- The app has a weird workflow and the Bluetooth connection is constantly lost, taking a minute to restore. It’s not a problem of my phone, I control many devices with Bluetooth just fine.
It really pains me to come to these conclusions, as I like the fresh thinking of this company and the guys behind it really are nice and helpful. But given steep pricing, I had higher expectations. Too many flaws, too frustrating to use.
It’s not all bad. The light output itself is excellent. The magnetic diffusers are a great idea and a joy to use. Turning the end of the arm to control beam size a unique feature. And surely when you learn to live with the issues above, you can get results. I’m keeping it around as a secondary solution and for one niche feature: UV photography. The UV arm is excellent.
Specific product details aside, to me the more important lesson is that any arm based lighting system coming from a single point, is conceptually sub par to a system with independent lights:
And I extend that conclusion to arm-based flash systems. If you truly want to take control of lighting, no arm is long enough to create the distances and angles you can easily make with independent lights.
Hence, the above system, as well as the ultra cheap IKEA lights, win in that regard. Which is not to say that a single point arm system never has any use. With a fully static small subject, and the arm system practically hugging it, you can set up custom creative lighting. It’s not impossible. Just more limited compared to independent lights.
Single point arm systems can be more practical, for example in the field, where setting up independent lights may not be an option. As the above photo already hints at: some lighting systems do both. Checkmate.
11.3 Arriving at Litra
Update 2023: The Litra company no longer exists, it was acquired by Logitech. Products mentioned in this section can no longer be purchased. The closest alternative may be Lumecube products.
To build on the previous section, and with an expensive lesson behind me, one important requirement for me was the versatility of the system, as I do macro photography in multiple contexts:
- Extreme macro photo stacking, a fully controlled indoors process
- Semi-controlled indoors, for example taking live subjects indoors
- Semi-controlled outdoors, cooperative subjects in places I can revisit
- Fully unpredictable field photography
In other words, a mobile lighting system of independent lights. But that’s not the only requirement:
- Has to be mountable (1/4" thread)
- Can run on batteries as well as AC power
- Accessory support, as a main goal is creative lighting
- Bright enough for the above needs
- If possible: high quality light (temperature, CRI)
- If possible: reasonable to good build quality for field usage
With that challenging combination of requirements, the amount of options narrows down significantly, and it’s how I arrived at the Litra lights.
Given my earlier mistake, I did not fully commit to it in one go. I bought one small light, and rigorously tested it. Only then tried the bigger light, and rigorously tested that. And then completed the set with a second bigger light.
Let’s dig in.
11.4 Litra Torch 2.0
Litra is a company that produces professional mobile LED lights to be used in photography, videography, action sports, diving, streaming, drones, anything requiring a high quality mobile light.
Their entry level product is the LitraTorch 2.0. The above review tells everything there is to know about it, so I’ll only enhance it with my own experience and how it fits into my use case.
I immediately fell in love with it the moment I had it in my hand. I adore quality products, especially given how so many camera accessories are sub par. It really has a military-grade build quality. A mini tank in your hand. It being fully water proof may come in handy once I can return to a rain forest.
The quality impression extends to the light output as well. Even by just human judgement you can easily see it has a perfectly neutral tone, identical to flash light. And although less important to me, it really is flicker-free. I have one indoor light remaining in the house that isn’t LED yet. When you expose your camera to that room, live view flickers. Turn on the Litra Torch and it’s fully gone. The product does what it says it does, and does it very well.
It has two 1/4" threads, which turned out to be critical. One of the 1/4" threads is one the same side of the cube as its charging port. So if that would be the only thread, it would be either charging or mounting, not both.
Luckily, it can be mounted and charged at the same time. And even better, when being charged, it can still be used. Out of its three brightness levels, level 2 will consume as much power as it receives from the charger. Which means I can run this light indefinitely on AC power. This is an important goal to me, everything in my setup is unlimited in power.
The only mild criticism I have of this product is that the three brightness levels are needlessly restrictive. Its direct competitor, the Lume Cube 2.0, has far more. These two companies are in constant competition with each other. For now, the main benefit of the Litra seems to be in its power: twice as bright.
The magnetic underside of the light combined with the Litra stickers aren’t just a fun gimmick, I actually have a use case for it:
See above. One thing I realized pretty late is that the WeMacro rail itself also has 1/4" threads in the front. Here I mounted a mini ball head to it and used one of the Litra stickers.
…which creates an additional mount point for bottom lighting, with effortless mounting and unmounting. In the total setup of lights, I don’t often use it this way. Most of the time, the small torch is used as a backlight or a spotlight, with this as an alternative for bottom lighting:
A reflector, again magnetically mounted. Note that due to the texture, it reflects and scatters light, which looks better than pure reflection as seen in aluminum foil or a mirror.
11.5 Litra Pro
The Litra Torch 2.0 excellence tempted me to have a look at its larger sibling:
In a nutshell:
- Bigger and more powerful, but actually still quite small so easy to aim
- Same high quality light (high CRI, no flicker) and build quality
- Color Temperature control
- More brightness steps
- Can be controlled via app
Just like the Litra Torch, it can charge and run at the same time yet its limits aren’t publicly documented. So I asked Litra support and validated their claims by testing it for 2 days in a row. It can run at 70% brightness indefinitely whilst being charged. You do need to ensure your charger delivers enough juice. I’m using a Belkin 24W dual charger where each port delivers 12W.
After a thorough validation of this product, I was once again deeply satisfied, and finalized the set with a second Litra Pro. Whatever lights you use, having 3 lights is commonly needed for many creative lighting recipes. In fact, in some cases I’m still short and bring out the old Adaptalux.
Note that there’s an even bigger light, called the Litra Studio, but even I have my limits.
11.6 Litra accessories
Besides durability, mobility, output and light quality, accessory support was a key differentiator for me. My intend is to use them creatively, so light shapers are essential.
Let’s first get the bad out of the way. The build quality of the accessories is crap. They are fragile pieces of plastic. The typical accessory is mounted by four thin plastic legs, and removing an accessory takes some force, so it’s fragile business. Not using a magnetic mount system is also disappointing.
So it’s quite a contrast between a light that probably survives a straight drop on concrete, and these sub par accessories. It’s a puzzling decision. Or business as usual. Companies can charge highly for accessories since they know the customer already has the core product. So outsource those parts cheaply and easily get a 100% margin whilst the core product may only have 10% or less margin.
This is how Venus Optics can make world class macro lenses yet at the same time release a tripod mount that doesn’t even fit their own lens. And it’s how Nikon can charge hundreds of dollars for trivial functionality like GPS and Wi-Fi all of which are available in a 100$ Android phone.
But I digress. As I will use most of them indoors, and with proper care, I can work with it. So let’s get to the good parts.
The first observation is silly. They are fun. Cute even. It’s like having a miniature photo studio. Let’s have a brief look at each accessory.
11.6.1 No accessory
Just a word to say that the light is typically not to be used without any accessory mounted. The light contains an array of LEDs, which would visibly show up in reflections.
11.6.2 Silicone diffuser
The exception to the rule of fragile accessories. These are excellent, super easy to mount and unmount, easy to clean, you can fold them up, and they deliver a beautiful even light without harsh highlights.
11.6.3 Softbox
Absurd price, so an open invitation to build something on your own. That said, it does lead to an excellent result. This softbox you need to build up from 5 flat panels, so it’s travel friendly. You can use this big softbox also on the smaller Litra Torch, by means of the 5$ softbox adapter.
Pricing aside, they work very well. In any light recipe, I will always have at least one pro light with the softbox on. One interesting technique I’m still testing is the Softbox sandwich. This is an alternative to the paper cup technique. I basically put 2 softboxes super close to the subject on each side. It has roughly the same effect as the paper cup technique, with the advantage that I can do without the tedious positioning of the paper cup over the subject. No blocking of the background either.
Fun fact: the reflector panel I showed a bit ago is the inside of one of the softbox panels.
11.6.4 Barn doors
Fun accessory as well as useful. The doors give fine grained control over where light lands, begins, ends. An important one because although our photo studio is miniaturized, from the perspective of the tiny subject its still enormous.
11.6.5 Honeycomb
This product controls the beam of light from its normal wide angle to 30°. In the context of extreme macro, it has proven to be useful. A common idea is to have global soft illumination using the softbox, whilst the other light sends a more direct beam at an angle to highlight a particular part of the subject.
It creates a sense of drama, which for some subjects I really like. The way I see it, controlling shadows is as important as controlling highlights.
11.6.6 Combinations
The Litra accessory system allows to stack some combinations of accessories, but it’s fairly limited. The color filter and diffuser filter can be combined with anything but you can’t stack the deeper accessories. For example, you can’t combine barn doors with a honey comb.
Finally, there is no snoot accessory nor a beauty dish.
Altogether, despite their crap build quality, I’m happy with the system in that they are functional and lots of fun to experiment with.
11.7 Mobile app
The Litra mobile app is excellent, if not perfect. It doesn’t matter when or how I open it, or when I return to it after an hour, it immediately shows in real time the light situation without any connection delay at all.
It is functionally simple and that is great. It shows your lights and their brightness and temperature. It is so smooth and reliable that this is the way I control the lights, I don’t use the buttons on the lights themselves.
11.8 Continuous lighting wrap up
It’s a significant investment, but I’m thrilled with these lights. Awesome quality, rigid, functional. I’ve tested them thoroughly for 3 weeks, and they deliver on what I need.
Moreover, what makes them even more worthwhile is the promise of field usage, which I’m still to test as the weather is too poor.
In particular shots like the above, oldies done with flash, I’ll try to reproduce with continuous lighting instead. I’m optimistic about it, as its much easier to preview compared to flash. In any case, off-camera lighting has been a breakthrough for me as an amateur, a far bigger differentiator than almost any other learning. I’m still learning and consider myself at the beginning of this creative lighting journey.
With that, we have a Flexcage, a world class arm system, and pro quality creative lighting in place. It largely tells the tale of the setup.
And still we’re not done.
Chapter 12: Background control
For the better part of my journey, I had not taken care of backgrounds as I had bigger fish to fry. Now I’m trying to integrate them as an essential (or at least enriching) part of the scene. The solution is simple:
A color card, or whatever is being used as the background, is held in place with a strong magnet, which is out of frame. Here’s the back of it:
The magnet is so strong that I can pull the card to try out different parts of the card without the magnet itself moving. Another fun variation is overlapping two cards, this way creating a gradient. This too the magnet can easily hold.
I adore these magnets. Already when you pick up the box, they seem to be excited to get to work. In reviews you will find people complaining that they can’t separate them, due to their strength. My kind of product. Do keep it away from children, except for very big ones like me.
The color cards are the Adaptalux macro backgrounds. I find them convenient, but honestly you don’t need to buy anything specifically for the sake of backgrounds. Depending on magnification, only a tiny piece is needed, say 1 x 1cm, and it will typically be out of focus.
So you can use anything for it. A single magazine or the spam in your physical mailbox alone provides infinite options to give your scene an interesting background.
12.1 Advanced background control
Although I’m fairly new to this background thing, in this section I want to share some lessons learned and food for thought.
In many cases, I’ve found that it’s not as simple as slapping a card behind the subject. The devil is in the details.
One aspect to consider is lighting your background. With a bit of luck, the lights illuminating your subject also illuminate your background in a way you consider attractive. Yet if you want more control, a different strategy is needed. In that case, you should position your main lights to only illuminate the subject and not the background, or use some way to block this spill light. At the same time, your background illumination should somehow still conceptually connect to the subject’s illumination, as that’s how it works in the real world too. It’s complicated.
Another aspect is the transition from subject to background. I’ve found that a hard stop isn’t very attractive.
We know our background is fake, but we don’t want it to look fake. In the above example, I think I did a fairly good job picking a fitting color for the background, and a reasonable job at illuminating it. But I still dislike the effect in this case. Where the subject ends, there’s nothing but a flat field. Zero depth. To me that makes it look artificial.
I think this can be solved in two ways. For a very flat subject like this, actually only one way. Add a 3D background instead of a flat one. This could be as simple as placing some foliage behind the subject.
The other way is for when your subject is not flat, deep instead. In that case, a successful approach is to limit depth of field. Don’t stack the subject to the end. By having parts of it out of focus, you get a more natural transition to the out of focus plane, instead of a hard stop.
12.2 Background innovation
I forgot where I picked up this idea, but in any case it’s not my idea. Use your smartphone’s screen as a background.
Clever. The possibilities are endless. As your smartphone screen will not really respond to unwanted light spills, you’ve solved that problem. This approach has two massive benefits:
The first one is that you’re no longer restricted to physical items as a background. You can pull up anything from your smartphone.
The second one is that your smartphone emits light. This brings possibilities I’ve yet to explore. But here’s one such idea: extreme macro bokeh.
Meaning, out of focus highlights in the background rendered like the beautiful circles we know from conventional macro photography. That’s extremely hard to pull of with high magnifications as such background light sources would need to be absolutely tiny. Theoretically, a bunch of pixels on a smartphone could do that. But I’m unsure, it could be that it’s not bright enough. If so, a bunch of glitters in the background may work.
The only challenge of the smartphone screen approach is that it’s typically not very bright. So you’ll need a long exposure time that also syncs with the rest of the lights. Furthermore, your screen’s output should be stable.
Chapter 13: Monitor
Here we come to the most needless and optional part of the setup, that turned into an absolute delight: an integrated monitor. Basically, I considered it the cherry on the pie, a final touch to finish the project.
13.1 Monitor alternatives
Let’s first explore the several reasons why you don’t need one.
The most obvious alternative is to just use live view. In my case this was not ideal as I access my setup from the side, not from the back of the camera. This gives me maximum access to the subject and lights, and normally I don’t interact with the camera at all, as I control it using Helicon Remote. A fully articulating LCD screen on the camera could solve the orientation problem, but I don’t have one.
Helicon Remote in itself is also a possible alternative. I don’t know if this is a Nikon only thing, but live view resolution really is very low. It gives a pretty crappy view when projected on a PC monitor. It’s definitely good enough to set focus points, but not great for very detailed inspection of the scene.
Another alternative is to use the camera’s HDMI port (which is different from live view output) and connect it to any PC monitor. It doesn’t even require a PC. The PC monitor can be a simple one as it’s in any case a radical upgrade in size, detail and brightness compared to live view. The only challenge is positioning the monitor in your space in such a way that you can easily inspect it without too much neck stretching.
Finally, you can explore tethered shooting. Helicon Remote is a method of tethered shooting, but there may be other ways for your camera where for example you can project to your smartphone or tablet.
13.2 Monitor integration
Clearly we don’t need a monitor. But what if we do get one? What value does it bring? I’ll first document the one I got, and how I mounted it.
This is a 5.2" 4K monitor. Expensive in absolute terms, but affordable in relative terms, as its the entry level professional product in the Atomos lineup. After using it, I’d also consider it cheap in absolute terms. Which is not to say that it’s not a lot of money, instead to say that a screen of this particular quality would really cost this much in just parts alone, or close to that. It’s not overpriced.
This may explain why it comes bare bones. Unlike other Atomos monitors, it has no recording facilities. Fine for me. It also doesn’t include a HDMI cable. Yet what it does include makes me very happy: a dummy battery. You can run it indefinitely straight from AC, out of the box.
I created a pretty clever mount point, considering how clumsy I tend to be. Because I’m using the WeMacro stand in horizontal mode, the above parts are spare. So I mounted the L-shape metal part to one of the threads on the base plate. On the screw facing forward, I mounted a cheap mini ball head which will be out of sight typically. And then finally comes an AtomX monitor mount. This peculiar combination is used to get it in the perfect position and angle:
13.3 Monitor value
I saw the monitor addition as Mercedes putting their logo on the hood of the car. It has no particular function, it just completes a nice product.
I was wrong.
The monitor has been a personal revelation. It’s so strong that I recommend you never get one. Videographers are long used to external monitors as they rightfully conclude that live view sucks. Live view is tiny and dim. Live view needs to be small and dim as to not consume too much energy from the camera’s battery. And that’s how as a photographer you are used to it, or just use the view finder. We don’t know any better.
The moment you turn this thing on though, you can’t go back. It’s exceptionally bright, sharp and accurate. Just for the sake of reference, I’ll compare it to my PC monitor next to it, which is no joke. It’s a Dell 34" IPS screen.
Apart from the obvious massive difference in size, the Dell has a pixel density of 109 PPI. The Shinobi: 427 PPI. The Dell is an 8-bit screen (16.7 million colors). The Shinobi: 10 bit (1.07 billion colors). The Dell outputs a brightness of 350 nits. The Shinobi: 1,000 nits.
It’s not just a spec fest, it shows. In some ways you can compare the screen’s quality with some very high end smartphones, and then bigger and consistently bright. The combination of brightness and sharpness in particular pulls you in. I’ve been missing out. As soon as the weather improves I’m most definitely going to take this into the field.
Fine, it’s a nice monitor. How does it help?
It’s an intentionally obnoxious example. With custom lighting, precision matters. A tiny change in angle or distance can have a profound effect. This monitor is exactly in the right place to let me preview outcomes in extraordinary detail. My face buried in the monitor, I gently make changes to the lights. I may tilt them a little or change their brightness via the app whilst directly seeing what it does. I may pull the background card a little.
In the above scene, I’m using green and blue lights (using color filters) and you can see from the monitor what effect each light has on the subject. Look carefully and you can see my attempt at backlight coming from the small Litra Torch, and how this creates a small shine at the top of the mantid’s eyes.
And this is just a crappy photo. The real world experience is infinitely better. The monitor closes the loop. It cements the process. The process is fun, inviting and intuitive. You can sit anyone in front of this setup and have a play with the lights. Until they get something they like. It’s a fully artistic process and not a technical one.
That I would consider the ultimate strength of this setup. It is an artistic setup. It uses technology to make extreme macro photo stacking less technical. Everything about the setup is smooth, fast, and easy to use. So that you can focus on the actual point: composition and lighting.
The monitor is useful in other ways. It has a bunch of overlays, most of which are useful for videographers, not photographers:
Yet some of them are quite useful:
- Focus peaking. An overlay color showing what is in focus. This is useful for single shots. For stacks it’s not that important. I’m also looking forward to using this feature in the field in combination with a manual macro lens.
- Zebra. Visualizes problematic exposure areas.
- Histogram. Exposure balance check similar to photography, but now live.
- Zooming. Getting extremely close to areas of concern.
In particular these may help to prevent mistakes.
Putting everything together:
I know, I’m terrible at making videos. To transcribe what is going on:
- I managed to position the subject, compose it, and set up lighting in a way that I like. I actually don’t like it in this case, but it’s just a demo.
- Rail positioning, focus points and camera exposure settings I continue to control from Helicon Remote on my PC monitor. In the video you can see the focus overlay and me starting the stack.
- The stack runs, peacefully. No flash, no mirror, no shutter. Just the sound of the rail moving.
Chapter 14: Conclusion
You have my greatest respect if you’ve made it this far. We’ve now covered both my journey and my setup in neurotic detail. In this final chapter I’m concluding on the strengths and weaknesses of this setup.
Integrated and compact
The entire setup, advanced as it seems…is actually tiny:
It only takes up a small portion of a desk, if you’d forget about all the cables. With the lighting poles lowered, the entire thing fits in an ordinary box. That means you could even consider such a setup if you have no dedicated space. You can easily take it to another room, or even to a friend.
Everything integrated on a single base gives me comfort. It’s less chaotic, less messy, and there’s no constant tear-up and tear-down of several components.
Infinite power
Camera, rail, lights and monitor are all on AC power and never run out. So that you can focus on what matters. But if you don’t like cables, everything can run on a battery too.
Infinite mounting
The pole system allows for mount points at any distance or angle. Combined with excellent arms and a quick release system, mounting becomes fast and smooth.
Infinite lighting
High quality lights supplemented with light shapers means there’s no limits to the lighting recipe you want to try. It’s not always easy, but it’s possible. A new world to explore.
No-touch workflow
Zero interaction with the camera or rail.
Real-time feedback loop
Due to the high quality monitor, exactly in the spot where it needs to be, composition and lighting becomes intuitive and a joy.
A System of Systems
Almost every component can be used in other contexts outside of focus stacking: lights, the monitor, the poles, arms. So it’s not just a focus stacking setup, it’s an advanced mobile photo studio. It’s not even restricted to just macro. As an example of something wildly different: record an interview with somebody. Use the Litra with softbox to light the scene. Put it on the pole. Use the monitor on camera for a good view. Anything goes.
Drawbacks?
Is there nothing negative to say about this setup? The elephant in the room is of course its high price. Which I personally accept for it being an extraordinary year. Yet the investment isn’t entirely irrational, each component is strategic, adds value, and is multi purpose. They should be durable enough to last a very long time.
Still, clearly it’s not optimized for cost. Here’s my attempt at ideas to bring down cost significantly whilst not sacrificing everything:
- Lens. Instead of buying a macro lens, explore cheaper options such as extensions rings and reversing a low cost prime lens.
- Monitor. Nice as it is, you can do without entirely, or get a cheaper one.
- Lights. Use the IKEA lights with homemade light shapers, or explore other lower cost LEDS. Or, search for refurbished or second hand Litra lights. Another way to save money is to get less lights, but you can’t take this too far if custom lighting is the goal. With mirrors and reflectors you may be able to remove at least one.
- Arms. Can’t be much cheaper but the seriously expensive quick release system is an obvious cost saver.
- Rail. No experience with it, but some people DIY their rail by purchasing the individual components.
- Software. Avoid the paid license of Helicon Remote and Helicon Focus by using free alternatives.
- Dummy battery. Which allows for running the camera on AC power. It’s expensive and you can do without.
- Camera strap. A minor one, but you obviously are not required to get the Peak Design strap. Just take of your normal camera strap.
- Extension arms on poles. I already had them, but you can do without.
- Pole. You can try to cover needs with just a single pole to mount things on.
Those would be my ideas to keep the conceptual idea of a flexcage yet at significantly lower cost. And it’s obviously not all or nothing, you can start low cost and gradually upgrade based on what bothers you the most.
Besides cost, an absolutely fundamental question to ask when considering a similar setup is your need for artistic control and possibility. Because that’s what it’s optimized for. If you’re happy with the popular paper cup approach and its results, much of this setup is needless. You won’t need the advanced mounting options, sophisticated lighting system or a monitor. Again, I’d advise to start small.
Final words
And with that we come to some closing words.
This is where the butterfly effect has taken me this year. I didn’t plan any of it.
As parting words I’d like to touch upon the exclusiveness of extreme macro photography. It’s a small club, a niche within a niche. We have access to a world very few people have access to.
Pioneering potential is everywhere. Outside a handful of popular subjects, for almost every subject in front of your lens, you’re one of the first and often the first to document it that way. It has massive educational potential, for the public and for science.
That is my take on extreme macro. Not as a contest to show how sharp or big I can photograph something. To me, it’s about meaning. Using the super power we have for a purpose other than mastering technology.
And that is what this setup aims to do. It removes as many technical hurdles from the process as is possible. So that I can focus on my subjects, which I hold so dear.
Thank you for reading, I hope it was in some way helpful.
Should you have a very big appreciation for this article and the effort that went into it, the best way to thank me is to donate to a wildlife charity of your choice. Thank you and stay safe ❤️.
