Macro photography may be one of the most challenging genres to work in, but it also remains one of the most satisfying. The ability to produce incredibly high-detail, high-magnification close-ups of small subjects opens up tons of creative possibilities, enriching your photographic repertoire.
Still, lighting macro subjects remains a sore spot for plenty of shooters, including yours truly. As expected, working at a totally different level of scale than in conventional photography puts some constraints on the way you use light sources and tools.
And not mastering lighting puts a heavy limit on the kinds of results you can achieve. Even with perfect composition and technique, a poorly lit shot won’t look very impressive!
Contents
Today, let’s take a closer look at macro photography lighting equipment and techniques. We will cover all you need to get started in the field without facing unwanted surprises, so strap in and get ready to take some notes!
Understanding Macro Lighting Options
What tools does the macro photographer have at their disposal to light their subject? Fundamentally, our options won’t sound too unfamiliar to anyone who’s been spending time behind the viewfinder for a while already.
Just like in most genres, it is perfectly possible to shoot macro photography in ambient light. In fact, it makes a lot of sense to rely on natural light sources. This is especially because many common subjects, plants, and small wildlife, are at home in the great outdoors.
However, ambient light is not always appropriate depending on your scene. There are definitely some potential shortcomings to over-relying on its simplicity.
That is why I will also introduce you to some artificial light sources for macro photography. You may already be familiar with some of these. For instance, both on-camera and off-camera flash photography techniques often do come in handy in macro shooting.
But some gadgets, like macro ring lights, are fairly unique to this genre in both their purpose and design. That is why I am going to dedicate parts of this guide to those kinds of lighting tools as well.
Most macro photographers are not exclusive in their selection of light sources, and they tailor it to the needs of each shot. A sound combination of natural light and various artificial lighting tools works best for the vast majority of situations.
Artificial Light Sources for Macro Photography
Let’s talk about gadgetry and equipment first before we go the natural route. What kinds of artificial light sources are there for macro photography, and which should you pick?
It goes without saying that the answer to a question like this will inevitably be subjective. Let’s do a slow walk through all your available options so that you may find out for yourself which of them suits your personal style.
Continuous Light
These are some of the most basic, ubiquitous, and in the opinion of many a macro photographer, the most essential lighting tools. Continuous light sources illuminate your subject using a low-power, but very stable source of light. Nowadays, this is usually a compact LED, or an array of smaller LEDs.
Probably the most common use of a continuous light source is as a fill light to balance out shadows.
Since LEDs come in all the colors of the rainbow, you can even use subtle continuous light to accentuate your subject’s natural body patterns or coloring. This works wonders when photographing certain kinds of plants or butterflies.
The great upside of a continuous light source is that it affords you all this control over how your subject looks without being overly cumbersome or complicated to work with. You can use these kinds of lights both on and off-camera and string as many of them together as you’d like. The consistent nature of continuous light also greatly aids in nailing down composition.
Do not, however, that continuous light does fall short somewhat when shooting macro photography of fast-moving subjects. In such contexts, the light may be too weak to keep up with the challenging exposure of such high-speed photography.
A Fan Favorite: Ring Flashes and Ring Lights
Ring lights and ring flash heads will be familiar to those of you who have shot portraiture in the studio before. In macro photography, they work exactly the same in terms of principle. Still, their construction is of course different due to the huge change in scale.
Ring lights dip your subjects in a soft, steady beam of light created by a ring of individual light sources (usually LEDs) formed around the subject.
This creates a sort of “light frame” within which you can perfectly place your subject to illuminate it. The result? Flattened-out shadows and lifted dark areas. For macro photography, a ring light is usually attached to the filter mount in front of the lens.
A ring flash works exactly in the same way, except for the fact that it provides high-exposure flash output for a very short duration, as opposed to the usually continuous (but much weaker) illumination provided by ring lights.
One major disadvantage is that the flash power of a ring flash tends to be quite a lot weaker than that of conventional on-camera flash heads. This can stir up some exposure trouble when shooting in weak light or at a smaller aperture.
Always Accessorize: Using a Diffuser
It’s the little things in life that often make the biggest difference, and I’d lie if I didn’t claim that to be true in photography as well! From strap lugs to viewfinder eyepieces, there have been tons of instances where seemingly innocuous, even superficial items made or broke my shooting day.
I am sure many of you have similar stories yourselves.
Well, in the world of macro photography, there is hardly any more crucial yet unassuming gadget than the diffuser. In essence, what a diffuser does is soften the output of flash or continuous lighting gear. It ever-so-slightly reduces the intensity of your light sources, in turn, evening out their exposure and giving your images a so much more natural look.
For certain kinds of flash heads or continuous LEDs, working without a diffuser is tantamount to a wasted shot – I am really serious about that!
The good news is that diffusers are incredibly cheap and easy to use. Just attach them to your light or flash unit, and you should be good to go! You can even make a basic diffuser yourself using household items! It pays off to have a few different kinds on hand depending, so why not try it?
How to Work with Natural Light for Macro Photos
The most basic of all macro photography lighting techniques is to just work with what nature hands you, of course. Natural light is at once the simplest and yet the most challenging lighting tool to work with in many ways.
The Benefits of Going Natural
On the one hand, natural light offers you boundless flexibility. Not weighed down by any extra gear save for your camera, lens, and tripod of course, you may experiment with composition and subject placement in a way that some more elaborate lighting setups for macro photography would not allow.
Natural light also tends to offer an advantage in terms of lifelike reproduction of subject details. Especially when shooting macro outdoors, the cold glow of LEDs can be visually distracting and introduce elements of artificiality to the (presumably) organic natural textures of your subject.
This may not be at all what you want. Shooting in natural light makes it easy to avoid these kinds of faux-pas.
It also takes a bit of the fuss out of metering and exposure. If you’re shooting macro on a bright day, you can freely use the ‘Sunny 16‘ rule, no problem. Or, of course, try any of your camera’s built-in metering modes as you usually would in everyday outdoor photography. No extra learning curves here!
Potential Disadvantages
Paradoxically, flexibility is also the key area where ambient light does somewhat fall short.
It’s not just indoor photography that becomes needlessly complex without any artificial lighting tools. Even outdoors, some parts of the day and some locations may just not provide enough exposure for your subject. Or, they may not provide it from the right angle.
Contrary to popular belief, for instance, a bright, sunny early afternoon does not constitute ideal conditions for most kinds of macro photography. Under the direct sun and a clear sky, contrast will be difficult to control. Some colors may not appear as crisp as you’d like them to be.
A bright, but cloud-covered, partly overcast sky works much better. But depending on your shooting location, those conditions may not be so easy to achieve! This means that macro photographers who rely on natural light often end up waiting around for the perfect hour to come. And many of them wait a lot!
When you are tracking a subject that likes to move around a lot, your options are even more limited, even in bright sunlight. Fast shutter speeds, necessary for freezing motion, severely limit your available exposure. In many cases, natural light alone won’t be able to keep up.
What to Watch Out For
Now that we should have a solid grasp on the kind of lighting equipment there is for macro photography, let’s delve a little bit deeper into matters of technique. I want to draw your attention to some common faux pas that often occur to newcomers.
There’s no shame here – we all start somewhere, and each of us has our stories of silly beginner’s mistakes we’d rather have done without. I know I do!
Maintaining Good Exposure No Matter the Light Source
One thing that is remarkably easy to forget is that having a strong light source, even an artificial kind, does not free you from the responsibility of making sure the exposure of your scene is within the right margins.
Metering for proper exposure with a complex artificial lighting setup can be tricky. This is why I would suggest to keep your lighting as simple as you can given the subject and the scene!
It helps to use matrix metering, or whatever equivalent full-scene metering technology your camera may support depending on the manufacturer. This will ensure that your camera’s built-in meter will take all light sources visible in the frame into account, not just light directly hitting the subject.
Keeping a Good Distance
You should also take note of your working distance, especially when using continuous LED ring lights. These kinds of lights are many times weaker than their studio-sized counterparts, which means you have a very narrow range of distances within which they will be effective.
This means that training the light on your subject and composing alone isn’t enough. If you miss this, you can easily snap a shot too quickly only to be left wondering why the light turned out entirely against expectations!
Try to play around with the ring light before setting up the shot. See how shadows and highlights change as you move around the camera. This way, you can test out and get a feel for the maximum distance between yourself and the subject that still allows for good lighting.
At the same time, do note that you don’t want to get too close. Harsh light from LEDs past their minimum distance can be very ungainly, causing unwanted reflections, blooms, or glare, as well as misplaced shadows and poor contrast.
Don’t Forget to Reflect
Another key macro photography lighting mistake that beginners often catch themselves making is assuming that light is only ‘good light’ if it hits the subject directly. In fact, the opposite is closer to the truth.
Even when you’re standing in a dark room, light is hitting you and your subject from all sorts of angles constantly. And most of that light is not coming directly from anywhere. It’s bouncing off of walls, furniture, and especially reflective surfaces like glass. This is what we commonly call bounce light, as opposed to direct light.
The reason bounce light is so useful is because it is simultaneously softer and less intense than the same light would be directly from the source. And as any experienced macro photographer would tell you, it is all too easy to accidentally use too much light!
To make use of bounce light and control it, whether outdoors or in the studio, use a reflector.
Reflectors usually attach to your light source directly and allow you to ‘guide’ the reflected light in a particular pattern. In a pinch, you can even make your own reflectors using aluminum foil and a bit of creativity! Large reflectors can also come in handy when you want to intelligently bounce around ambient light out in the field.
Best Practices for Macro Photography Lighting Setup
It goes without saying that there are a lot more things that could be said on the subject of mastering lighting for macro photography. I do highly suggest you go and read up on a few more advanced techniques and ideas that were, for better or worse, beyond the scope of this short guide.
For instance, one very exciting thing to toy with in macro photography is using a backlight to highlight your subject’s silhouette, which can bring out its most flattering features and textures. Beyond just lighting alone, there are of course tons of other considerations to make, from lens choice (you do have a dedicated macro lens, right?) to focal length, tripod heads, and even more.
But don’t fret – there’s no need to get lost in those weeds just yet. With what you’ve picked up today alone in this guide, you should be more than well-armed to take on your next macro photography lighting challenge! Just try shooting some simple macro subjects with a sound lighting setup and see where you end up from there.
Attempt to iterate with each new shot and see how small differences in settings can have big consequences on your images. With time, you will develop a good understanding of exactly what kind of lighting each frame needs!
Take Away
Lighting is a challenging subject to master, and it adds a layer of skill and creative challenge to the already complicated subject of macro photography. Nevertheless, lighting can be tackled just like any other discipline, and broken down to its core ingredients, it need not be an insurmountable obstacle! The core lessons you have learned today – from managing harsh direct light by diffusing and reflecting to choosing your lighting tools wisely – will go a long way toward making you an adept macro photographer who understands what kind of lighting is suitable for which kind of shot. Good luck with your practice!
