This is a common mistake that people think that close distance shots need less light. There are several reasons that require a lot of light for macro shots:
- When shooting macro, your depth of field is greatly reduced due to the proximity to the subject. To compensate for that, you would often need to close down your aperture quite a lot, letting less light in. When doing so, a powerful light would be needed to properly expose the subject.
- Macro images are much more prone to shaking and every movement could result in a blurry subject. To make sure you get a sharp image, you would need a very fast shutter speed. While shutter speed does not apply to strobes, this is quite important when shooting macro with a video lights and would require more light to expose the subjects.
But… Many people use compacts and Gopro, shoot in auto mode and sometimes shoot subjects that don’t move much like Nudi’s. In that case it is true that you can get by with less light. The above explanation mostly applies to more advanced systems and more experienced photographers.
It is also worth mentioning that beam angle is a very important factor here. a lower lumen dive light with a narrow beam, can actually concentrate a lot of light on a very small area which could be sufficient for lighting up a small macro subject and prove to be enough for getting good stable shots.
More about this here.
- Native Lenses vs. Wet Lenses for Underwater Photography – December 20, 2023
- The Complete Guide to Practicing at Home for Underwater Photographers – October 4, 2023
- Best Strobe for Underwater – The Ultimate Strobe Guide (Updated!) – June 29, 2023
2 comments
Does that mean the focus light in the Inon z40 strobe is not enough to auto focus and get a sharp photo ?
Hi Hani,
The focus light on the Z-240 isn’t very strong. It’s about 180 lumens.
It will help somewhat in very dark lighting conditions, but it’s not as effective as a main focus light.
Also, pointing the strobe on the subject is not always the right thing to do, as we will learn in Bonaire 🙂 Often you would want to point the strobe outward which wouldn’t allow using it as a focus light.
Hope that helps!