Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: May 2014 Location: Pugetopolis, WA |
A point I never saw answered in all these great suggestions,
What is the target subject matter?
Insects, flowers, coins, machinery, electronics?
If you are looking to chase live insects around a garden, you need different magnification and lighting set up vs. live flowers in the garden vs. static indoor subjects,
Are you looking to set this up in a studio, or on a bench, or use it on-the-go in the field?
The more you magnify, the bigger problem motion becomes, for both camera and subject. Get a remote release,
I'd recommend a good solid tripod, that is quick and easy to adjust, Reversing column is not that great of a feature, it's hard to get your head inside the legs, better to get one with legs that can be spread wide, consider one without a (or with a removable) center column, you can drop right flat onto the ground.
All the lighting suggestions above could work, depending on your subject.
Ring lights are OK, but give a very flat, sterile light, everything looks the same under them, makes for a very technical, "Field guide" quality to bugs and flowers. Unless you are cataloging things, you will get tired of that light quality quickly.
Get a bracket to get your flash off the axis of the lens, and get some direction to the light through your scene, you can work with your built-in pop-up flash to provide some fill while triggering your main flash off camera, with the right unit or an optical slave on the off camera flash, you don't need a cord between the camera and the flash unit. Most of the best brackets get modified by the users to their needs and gear, I'd hate to recommend an off the shelf solution.
It's good you found a 100 mm lens, for most macro work, longer is better, especially if you really want to get closer than 1:1; your working distance gets frustratingly close, no room to get lights in, and live critters don't cooperate. Even 100 mm at greater than 1:1 has a short working distance.
The main thing I can suggest, is don't go crazy buying stuff right away, the kit you described is a good start, play around with it, shoot all the crazy combinations you can come up with and look at your results, compare lighting and focus for different combinations of magnification and light sources. Get to know your gear, and how it works in different set ups and conditions. Post results for feedback and criticisms, this forum is a tremendous resource.
You have a great advantage over many of us here on the forum, you can learn this digitally, where every shot is essentially free, us oldsters learned these things on film, that cost us $ for every press of the button whether it was a good shot or not. You can just wipe the card and start over again.
Have fun with it!
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