Hi All,
Just thought I'd try to contribute a little by sharing a very effective method for shooting macros and close-ups without a tripod.
I
never shoot close-ups/macros of living things with a tripod as I find it too cumbersome, and too likely to startle some of my subjects. But if you have an external ttl flash, you can take wonderful close-up/macro shots *handheld*. Here's how...
You need to get your light onto your subject (obviously). You can use ring flash, twin lights, bouncers, etc to do that. I often use just a Lumiquest pocket bouncer to bounce light down in front of the lens. Now here's what you do- set the camera to manual. Set it to a nice small aperture for good depth of field. Since the camera has TTL metering, you can set your shutter speed to *whatever you want* and still take a great shot. By setting a very short shutter speed, you pretty much guarantee that you will have no blur due to camera shake. Additionally, very short shutter speeds will not allow enough time to "soak up" background light, so all of the light illuminating the scene will be flash light. This is a great way to blacken distracting backgrounds. If you *want* the background visible, simply give your shot a longer shutter time.
Here are a few examples illustrating shots with shutter speeds short enough to turn distracting backgrounds to black:
And here's an example of using a short enough shutter speed to get your subject sharp, but long enough to give some background:
Also, if you are using a bouncer for this, one very nice benefit is that sometimes you can make a close working distance work for you- by getting in very close, you can actually bouce light *behind your subject*, which gives a very nice backlighting/translighting to subjects like snow corns, light amels and other more translucent subjects.
Finally, if bouncing the light straight down, it's always a good idea to get something below your subject to use as a reflector. In a pinch, a piece of while paper works just fine for this.
Hope this has been helpful for some.
Kind Regards,
Brian