What’s wrong with this picture?

This is really not a bad picture at all. It’s the tail of a chameleon, and the spiral graphic design is pleasing. The dark background seen in the upper and lower left corners means there is nothing in the background that’s distracting.

The one thing that bothers me about this picture, however, is very flat lighting. I used a ring flash which is my ideal type of light source for many small amphibians, reptiles, insects, and even flowers. The curled tail is essentially a single plane. The rich texture can be underscored by sidelighting the tail from any angle.

The comparison picture on the next page was also done with a ring flash, but in this case I removed the flash from the 50mm macro lens and held it to the side. The power pack of the ring flash was still sitting in the hotshoe. The accordion style cable that connects the flash and the power unit is short, but it’s long

enough to extend the ring flash to the side of small subjects that are just inches from the camera. Photographing large subjects, such as a person, means the camera-subject distance is a few feet, and that, in turn, means the cable and your arm aren’t long enough to position the light to create significant sidelighting. Besides, ring flashes are designed to be used very close to the subject.

You can see how pronounced the texture is in the tail of the chameleon with the sidelighting. To make sure the entire frame is sharp, I used a lens aperture of f/32 and, as I discussed on page 8, I made sure the back of the camera was parallel with the plane of the tail.

Some ring flash units have the ability to set a light ratio, which theoretically creates varying degrees of side light. In my experience, this doesn’t work well. For dramatic light like I show here, you have to take the ring flash off the lens and hold it with a severe angle to the plane of the subject. §