Cool Macro

 My stock photos @ Alamy.com

Today I went out to take some Macro shots of bugs. The problem was that I couldn't find too many of them. Luckily I still saw some and managed to produce some nice images :)

 Before going out, I thought I'd use my flash to light the set. I knew I'd be using my light pretty close to my subjects, so, I needed something to soften it. The softbox, I built before, was kinda too big for this. So, I decided to build a second, smaller one, that I could mount directly on my flash.

Doesn't look much, but works just fine

 For this, I pretty much used the same materials as before. I only didn't use the wires, because this softbox is smaller, so it didn't need that much support. For the front of the softbox, I used some plastic to strengthen it a bit. Other parts are just aluminum paper and some tape.

 As for the shoot. I used 2 tripods, one for my camera, the other for flash. I also used the radio flash triggering system. I played with my cameras settings a lot to get the best shots I could. And wow, did that make a difference. The photos I took today, compared to the shots I have taken before, were from another planet.
 For some reason I always thought that my lens wasn't the best for the job(I used Tamron 18-200mm f3.5-5.6 DiII Macro). I always got my images unsharp and not looking that great. They always needed a lot of work in lightroom.With this setup, my images came to life. They are so much better I think. Live and learn :)

Anyway, judge my images yourself :)

My stock photos @ Alamy.com