I am a surgeon looking for the best camera to show detail of small spider veins, accordingly I'm interested in the one with the best Macro capability with flash. Anyone out there with an opinion about this?

Thanks

-- Phil F (pfelic@aol.com), October 14, 1999

Answers

The nikon 950 is the undisputed ruling champ for macro right now. I saw a slave ring flash for it somewhere, pretty expensive. You can probably do a good cheap job with a sunpak external flash and diffusor.

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), October 14, 1999.

When you are working close, the camera flash will put too much light on the image.

-- Dave Clark (daveclark@mail.com), October 15, 1999.

please disregard the previous method. I tried to add new info to the subject but decided I was not. Tried to delete it and posted instead.

The note looks negative. The nikon is a great camera and takes super macro shots. However macro photography takes some special considerations and this needs to be worked out. I guess it would be nice if anyone could grab a camera and point and shoot without knowing anything. But that is not always the case.

-- dave clark (daveclark@mail.com), October 15, 1999.

I'm a dentist and I was hoping to find a way to use a flash for macro photography with my Nikon 950. I purchased the ring flash and bracket from http://www.bugeyedigital.com but was not happy with the results because it seems that when you get closer than 12 inches from the subject your picture is overexposed. I played around with the camera settings in manual mode but I still haven't found a solution to this problem. I attached my Nikon macro flash to my digital camera and got slightly better results but in automatic mode everything is overexposed. One thing I found works really well for macro is to just use a 20 watt fluorescent bulb as a light source and automatic mode, flash off setting on the camera. This gives really nice macro shots. I'm working now to devise a portable light stand for my flourescent lamps.

I really need more information on lighting for macro photography. I'd like to find out about lighting solutions, camera settings, shutter releases and techniques. I'd appreciate any information you might have.

-- Mark A. Dellinges (mdellin@itsa.ucsf.edu), October 18, 1999.

Diffusor. Reduces overexposure and harsh shadows. Costs like $10.

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), October 21, 1999.