One of the things that I really liked about my old CoolPix 995, the camera I used two cameras ago, was a ring light that I had for it. This light screwed on to the end of the lens, and had something like six white LEDs inside a translucent plastic circle ringing the lens. It made for very nice lighting on close macro shots.

With my recent resurgence of interest in macro, I had been looking for a ring light to use with my macro lens. But then, my friend Karla told me about a new Nikon macro light set that had just come out. It wasn't exactly a ring light (although if you get a few extra flash units, it can closely approximate one) but it provided much more flexibility in macro lighting. It also came with a wireless commander piece that would control the big flash unit that I already had. I decided that I had to have one of these sets, and promptly surfed to a few of my favorite online camera shops and ordered one.

Well, on the 14th, I got notice that my new macro light set had arrived. I picked it up at the post office after work, and then stopped by a store and got the appropriate batteries. At home I unpackaged it all (there were lots of little pieces), read a minimal amount of the manual in order to figure out how to operate it, and headed outside to see what it would do.

The first interesting little thing I encountered was a yellowjacket on a rhododendron. The 'jacket was lame and was crawling around slowly on the leaf rather than walking around quickly, which is more the usual case. This made him a good first subject, as he didn't get away when I fiddled with the settings on the camera and flash. Here's my yellowjacket.

Now, the light set includes a plastic ring that attaches to the end of a lens. Onto this ring, one can mount one or both of the lights in the set.

To attach the ring to the lens, one needs an adapter for the lens' thread size. The set comes with several, but none of them were the right size for my macro lens. Consequently, I was using my general-purpose lens rather than my macro lens for these photos. To make that lens macro-capable, I put an extension tube between it and the camera. It turned out that this combination takes passable macro shots.

My next subject was an ant who was sipping some liquid from a small flower. I'd suspect that the liquid is nectar rather than water; ants tend to have a real sweet tooth.

So far, so good. I was checking my photos on the little LCD screen on the back of my camera as I went, and it looked like I was getting decent lighting with no harsh shadows. Having two lights really helps with that, as one light can fill in the shadows of the other.

I continued along the outside of the building, and stopped at one of the many rose bushes to take a few rose photos. Here one of the challenges is getting the lights close enough to center so that the middle of the flower isn't in deep shadow.

That turned out to be fairly straightforward. All I had to do was hold the camera a little farther back from the flower than I had from the insects, and aim the lights a little more...straight forward.

Around the side of the building, I found a little snail on a rhodo. That was pretty exciting, as snails are neat little guys. He was headed into the depths of the bush, so I plucked him off and put him out near the edge. Unfortunately, when I did that, I dropped him and it cracked his shell a little.

Snails have the capacity to generate a sort of cement for repairing their shells when they get damaged like this, so this fellow will most likely be just fine...but I still felt pretty bad about having dropped him.

Anyhow, he crawled around on the leaf for a while, affording me some very nice camera angles. The lights were doing a pretty good job on him, although sometimes the reflection I got off his shell was a little borderline.

This particular type of snail is a Grovesnail (Cepaea nemoralis); they're quite common in this area, but easy to miss if you're not looking too closely.

He eventually crawled back to the other side of the leaf and from there into the middle of the bush. I took one last shot as he went. This one is probably the worst-lit of the bunch, but I didn't really have time to set the lights properly. Snails can move fast (relative to their size) when they want to.

Bottle flies are a type of Blowfly, so if you know these guys as blowflies, then that's right, too.

The general lens and extension tube combination was good, but it wasn't as easy to focus as my macro lens, and it also wasn't quite as sharp. So I did end up with some photos that were a little soft, like the following one.

That wasn't technically a great photo; it wasn't as sharp as I like, and it showed one of the real problems that one can have when using two lights: the eyes have two highlights each. That doesn't generally happen in real life, as there's only one sun. So, in looking at that spider's eyes, it's very clear that we're looking at a flash photo. The dual highlights are quite distracting.

To avoid that problem, I'd have to take one of the lights off of the lens ring and place it somewhere else. Unfortunately, jumping spiders have bulging eyes, so often there's no really good place to put the second light. Situations like that call for light diffusers to spread out the second light so it doesn't form a sharp highlight.

Well, after all that discouraging thought, I did manage to get a placement of spider and lights that worked. One light here is almost directly above the spider, on the lens ring. The other light I had placed on the right, with its power turned down quite a bit.

By the way, I should tell you that that jumping spider is one from the genus Eris. I'm sure you wanted to know that.

It was still light outside, but the entire courtyard was in shadow (which happens fairly early in the evening, as our building is several stories tall.) With the flash set, I could ignore the lack of sun, and so I was able to find several more subjects before heading in. First up was a red rose.

So if you're planning on eating one, use lots of barbeque sauce. Better yet, just drink the sauce and forget the snowbell.

In the planter below the snowbells, there were some plants with very colorful leaves. I don't know the type of plant, so it'll have to remain nameless for now.

I don't get to see her too often, so it was nice that she dropped by.

I ended this first outing with the light set with a few more of our local spiders. I think this one is the same species as the previous one, despite the much lighter coloration.

Where are all of the arachnologists when you need 'em?

After the spiders, I went in to have a look at photos so that I could learn what had worked and what hadn't. It turned out that I had done fairly well for a first session, which is mostly attributable to how well-designed the light set really is. I'm sure I'll be having loads of fun with it in the days and months and years to come.

Enjoying the new toys,
Tom