With tons of available options, choosing the right lighting for macro photography doesn’t have to be a challenge, if you know what to look for.
In any type of photography, lighting is one of the most important factors, whether it be natural, artificial or a combination of both, and if the lighting isn’t right, your final image might suffer.
Natural Light
Sunlight is the ultimate light source and it has the benefit of being free to use! It does however, comes with both advantages and disadvantages.
While the sun provides more than enough light for macro photography, it’s only really useful when shooting outdoors, or set-up near a window that allows ample amounts of natural light to stream in.
One of the challenges of using the sun as your light source is that it is constantly moving, thus the angles and potentially, the quality of the light, is always changing and not easy to control.
That can of course be somewhat managed by using reflectors designed to bounce light and/or light diffusers to help mute a light source’s intensity, but these can be a little cumbersome when you are out in the wild looking for subjects to shoot.
Artificial Light – Continuous and Flash
Artificial light on the other hand, has a lot of advantages, the biggest being that it’s 100% controllable and can be positioned in exactly the way you want it to be.
There are many types of artificial light that you can use for macro photography including on-camera flash, ring-lights, studio lights and LED lights that can provide a continuous light source
Continuous Lighting
The benefit of using continuous lighting when shooting macro photography is that it provides an easy way to control the characteristics of the light allowing you to see how the light is affecting your subject at all times.
It also offers a more direct way to light specific areas of your subject from almost any angle, providing you with full control of the lighting environment.
Continuous lights also make it super easy to control the intensity, diffusion and even colour of the light allowing you to adjust the settings and preview the results in real time.
On/Off Camera Flash
Using on/off camera flashes or strobes for macro photography can also produce some stunning results when used properly.
There are many different options available, from a standard on-camera flash head, to more specialized macro ring-flashes that are mount on the end of a lens and connect to the camera via the multishoe (aka hotshoe) mount like a regular flash.
The main advantage of using flash rather than continuous lighting, is its ability to seemingly “freeze” subjects thanks to the short duration of the light.
This makes it a great option when out in the wild for use as a fill light or for capturing fast moving subjects.
The downside to using flash is that it comes with a fairly steep learning curve in order to use it properly, with potentially unfamiliar flash settings such as manual mode, TTL and rear curtain sync.
However, once you’ve learned the system through what will undoubtably amount to be lots of trial and error, the results can be spectacular.
Cover Image Credit: Brittany Ashworth