Hi, I'm Alexis and I make videos all about Macro Photography and the tiny hidden world that I photograph. I talk about the insects and other organisms that I find (spiders! springtails! slime molds!), as well as technique, equipment, and lots more...
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Excellent content! Three great tips not everyone thinks of or utilizes enough. Glad to find your channel, have already shared it with a number of friends who are also into macro photography of flowers and insects in the field. Thanks!
Great video
Great video!! Amazing shots as well!!
Hey Alexis, Been following you for a short time now, and first congrats on your work, it's amazing and inspiring! I've got a few technical questions regarding gear and the capabilities of your camera(s) : - On instagram, you seem to have switched form a X-H2 to a G91 somewhat "recently", do you use them in tandem or is there a reason from moving from one to the other? (i' m currently on the hunt for a macro-oriented camera setup, and i'm looking for as much info as i can) - How do you mount your Laowa 25mm to the G91? I can't seem to find the right mount on the laowa website.. Is there an adapter? And if yes does it hamper your ability to do focus bracketing? - Regarding brands, i'm also eyeing an Olympus Em1, any opinion about their gear? I hope you don't mind all the questions, it can be a bit much answering to many comments. Keep up the great work, looking forward to your future pictures!
Tu es vraiment bon et dans le partage. Une qualité essentielle pour faire de la formation👍 bravo!
Merci beaucoup! Cette video très riche est vraiment bien expliquée. Très bon tutoriel! Des exemples et explications parfaites. Un abonné de plus. Il faut continuer. 👌👍
Thank you so much for sharing your experience and macro techniques to us ! You won my subscription! Again thank you and have a wonderful day!
One of, if not THE best macro photography channels out there. Seriously. I've seen so many, too many! All of that could be spared with just watching your. Your presentation, the results- others simply cannot compare. Thank you. Atb from Norway
Young person, you are very very good at what you do.
Have you added DXO pure raw4 to the workflow for when you need higher ISO settings?
You amaze me!
Very good and comprehensive video. However, I think that you missed out the part about training the insects to stay still when you are doing the focus bracketing. Maybe they were frozen by the light of the first flash?
Every one of your videos I watch seem to be a masterclass in Macro Photography! Those Dam Zel Flies can be pretty elusive! Keep up the amazing content.
Let this be said - I'm not even a third of the way through your video and I have learned things about macro and flash photography that were never taught to me over the last ten years of my photographic journey. You have a knack for this education thing Sir. Please continue making these types of educational videos as I am a huge fan of learning from quality educators. Now, onward to the remaining 2/3 of the video...
couldnt have put it better myself
I scond all the opinons great video. I'm learning a lot thank you.
At my experience, diffraction while stopping down is not a big issue with the M.Zuiko 90mm/f 3.5 Macro.
Quick question....are you doing focus bracketing with the Fujifilm XH2 and the manual Laowa lens? I believe this focus bracketing is not possible on lenses without autofocus am i right ?
do you use the shots when the flash didn't fire ? Or Is it 70 photos with flash, or 70 in total with and without ....?
Great video Very informative and easy to follow ! Keep them coming
I also take great macro 😂
Lovely
Great video mate..You are just killing it...Keep growing and wish you all the best !!!
Another great video Alexis, thanks for continuing to share your knowledge.
Absolutely fantastic explanation , brilliant video loved this.
Thank you for taking me to macro school Alex! I was battling the 'softness' of many an attempted macro shot. Felt like my succeeded images were slightly lucky single shots. Now, with your insights, I have some techniques to try out and improve my macro to gain some more control in the field. I will be sure to rewatch this from time to time while learning. Great stuff!! :)
Phenomenal video! Should be required viewing for anyone starting out in macro.
I'm a novice when it comes to macro photography with a flash, but it seems to me that this advice is spot on as long as you're using a lens with short focal length and the subject is close to the flash/diffusor. For those of us that uses macro lenses with long focal lengths and/or have more of a pseudo-macro photographic style (ie. less than 1:1) I think that the distance to the subject should be considered as the fifth setting. The reason is that effective flash power decreases very quickly when you move away from the subject, and a some point raising flash power will lead to harsh lighting in photo or an image that is not sharp due to movement of camera and/or subject. As an example, my Canon EF 180 macro has a minimun focus distance of 480 mm, and I find that using this with a flash is rather difficult, and even more so if I'm varying the distance to the main subject between shots (it's also difficult to make a diffuser that works at longer distances). In my case, I tend to only use flash for 1:1 macro, and natural lighting when using a longer lens. TLDR; when the working distance increases, the use of flash becomes more challenging.
Great video, keep up the good work :)
It was my first time seeing one of your videos! I really enjoyed it. Your directions are very precise into the point. You said that you've done focus stacking in the past. Which video was it. I'm sure I will get to it sooner, Or later, but it would help if I knew which video it is. What camera are you shooting with, and what flash is that? What model of the defuser are you using? New subscriber to your channel!
I show bts of focus stacking in basically all my videos, any of the "macro walks" episodes would be a good bet. I haven't done a tutorial on the technique yet, but will definitely do that at some point. I always put the equipment I use in the caption of my videos.
@naturefold OK thank you!!!
One of the best,if not the best demonstration of macro photography here on KZread.
Does your camera focus stack automatically? My Z6ii does, but it uses silent shutter to do so, meaning it won't trigger the flash.
My camera can focus bracket automatically, but I don't use auto bracketing since it requires an autofocus lens and my lens is manual focus only. Instead I shoot in burst mode and move the camera forward slowly to change focus between shots.
@@naturefold excellent. I’ll try that with my TTArtisans 100mm.
Is your lens manual? I am having hard time with manual focus. I shoot x-t5. Laowa 65
The laowa 65mm is manual focus only yes
Excellent video, thank you. I have two questions: 1) What setting do you use for White Balance? I have been keeping my camera on Auto WB while using flash and am happy with the results. Perhaps the the camera is automatically using a 'Flash' WB, but in Lr it just shows the WB as 'As Shot'. 2) Are you stacking 'in camera' and then further editing the JPeg it produces, or are you stacking in post, and if so what software are you using?
Thanks! I use custom white balance at 5800k, which gives the most neutral wb with my setup. It's usually better for macro to have a set white balance to keep color consistent between shots, since the flash gives out a consistent color temparature.
@@naturefold Thanks for the info. I just updated my WB camera setting accordingly.
Kudos to you!
Thank you! Very informative and nicely presented. By the way, I love the second wasp photo.
8:20 this is a common misconception. The noise/grain doesn't come from high ISO, but from lack of available light. ISO 100 photo in low light situation will be much grainier than ISO 6400 photo in bright daylight.
Yeah that might have been worth mentioning.. In this video I mostly wanted to focus on the effect on your images when using flash, and with flash you should always have sufficient light so the main effect of raising the iso is you'll have more noise (Provided you adjust the exposure with other settings to keep it stable).
Absolutely beautiful photographs. Thanks for all the great tips.
Thank you, Alex, for explaining your macro settings. In my opinion, the macro settings depend heavily on the system used (means find out what's the best you yourself). If I understand correctly, the depth of field with MFT is doubled by a factor of 2 compared to FF, which is a big plus. With my FF camera, the optimal depth of field ends at F11 (out of camera), after which only Topaz helps.
Sensor size makes no difference to DOF. DOF is a combination of only 2 factors, aperture and distance to subject. The reason smaller sensors appear to give more DOF is because at the same focal length you're shooting from further away which increases the DOF. Crop sensors do just that, crop. Nothing else, cropping does not change DOF. Gerald Undone has an excellent video about this you can find called "Does focal length & sensor size affect DOF?"
@@shanewilliams613 Thanks for the info, of course Undone's explanation is clear. If I understand correctly, that means the DOF is the same: FF/100mm, F11 corresponds to MFT/50mm, F5.6. I think I expressed myself incorrectly. The advantage of MFT is that you have a larger DOF with the same F-Stop. With MFT/50mm I get a DOF of 9.9mm at F11, I get this DOF with FF/100mm at f27 and as we know diffraction has a negative impact on the calculation (what I'm writing here is based on the assumption that diffraction depends on the F-Stop and not on the sensor size). But I'm a bit confused. Why? I have a DOF calculator, if I set a distance of 30cm for FF/100mm and F11, I get a DOF of 3.8mm. For MFT/50mm (equal FF/100mm, right?) and F5.6 (equal F11, right?) it is a DOF of 5.0mm. I get roughly the same DOF for MFT/50mm, F4, which means 3 F-stops. Perhaps the different aspect ratio between FF and MFT plays a role or the DOF calculator is calculating incorrectly.
@@markustappeser841 It gets very complicated. It took me a long time to wrap my head around it until I watched that video. Yes, you get more DOF at the same f-stop, but that's only because you're going to be shooting from farther away with the same focal length. Equivalencies etc are complicated, as the size of the photosites impact noise and diffraction as well. I suppose the main thing for me is that it's a common misconception and sated by a lot of shooters that you just get more DOF from crop sensors which just isn't the case, so if you shoot FF you are not at a disadvantage. It's just different working distances and field of view. The main thing is to shoot at your sharpest aperture for the kit you have and get as many pixels on subject as possible so you get max detail and cropability. At the end of the day it makes no difference to DOF what kit you do that with as you can't beat the laws of physics, but crop sensors certainly give you a lot closer field of view while maintaining a decent working distance, and of course many other benefits like size, weight and price.
Yeah you're absolutely right, I hope that difference came across in the video!
You're a dedicated teacher with a Lot of knowledge super
Very good video..I literally asked you this question yesterday in a comment on a previous video regarding flash settings for handheld stack. Thanks a lot
The perfect narrative structure! This video will be the most viewed on your channel. Thank you very much for the work done! I came to these rules myself in the process of practice. At first I couldn't do anything, but gradually the result became very good. In total, I usually have an aperture of 5.6, shutter speed of 1/200 (or 1/30 for the background), iso 100, and I balance the exposure with flash power. Thanks again for the video and greetings from Crimea!
nice video, thanks for that
Very detailed explanations! Thanks mate. Great videos as always
Yet another fantastic fact filled video for the macro beginner! I have enjoyed all your videos to date. Widel, Shahan watch out there's a new gun for hire on the block!
Hey thanks, we need more of you in the world. Very clear understanding. Well done kid 👍
An amazingly good video. Useful, understandable, very useful advice. I look forward to your next videos!!!!
Spot on. Well done and I look forward to your next video.
Excellent video as always Alex. This will be so helpful to me. Many thanks, I really appreciate your advice. :)
Great video, thanks for sharing 🙏🏻 I have a question, how you’re handling focus pick when there is not enough ambient light. This is the problem that I couldn’t handle with Fuji X-T5. I’m also using Laowa 65mm and Natural View setting but it’s not provide enough visibility all the time. Do you use any additional settings on this regard? Thanks in advance 🙏🏻🙏🏻
Thanks! Sometimes it's really difficult in dark situations as the camera just can't get enough light to preview, have you tried using some sort of focusing light to help? I use a small headlamp strapped to my flash, and some flashes like the godox v860iii have a focusing light built in.
@@naturefold you’re the best. I didn’t tried it before and will check as soon as possible. Many thanks 🙏🏻
Nice to see someone talking about slower shutter speeds and ISO to blend flash and ambient. I usually use manual flash when I am photographing subjects at similar distances. During some sessions I switch a lot between very close and more environmental compositions. In this case I find that ETTL -1 or -2 depending on the look I’m after to be less overhead than adjusting manual flash.