Macro - New flash technique - comments?

[VP-]

So I decided my ringflash wasn't diffused enough, so I added 4 layers of wax paper over each strobe to soften things up. Just looking for others opinions of these look better than what I have previously posted.

Also testing out Lightrooms slideshow feature, these are the jpgs from it, slightly lower quality than I would have liked they loose some of the pop prior to exporting also. Name also needs changed.

So, do they look better than before? REMEMBER - NO PHOTOSHOP - LOW QUALITY JPGS.

Canon 20D - Sigma 150mm F2.8 - EM-140 Ring - Wax Paper - Lightroom Raw conversion and editing - Default 25 sharpening and 25 noise reduction.

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j142/tcline04/IMG01_11.jpg

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j142/tcline04/IMG01_10.jpg

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j142/tcline04/IMG01_9.jpg

[VP-]

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j142/tcline04/IMG01_8.jpg

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j142/tcline04/IMG01_7.jpg

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j142/tcline04/IMG01_6.jpg

[VP-]

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j142/tcline04/IMG01_5.jpg

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j142/tcline04/IMG01_4.jpg

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j142/tcline04/IMG01_3.jpg

[VP-]

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j142/tcline04/IMG01_2.jpg

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j142/tcline04/IMG01_1.jpg

[senor-turkey-lurkey]

hahah just saw these on FM NERDFACE

[VP-]

fucking n0r is part of the FM engineering club. ;)

[senor-turkey-lurkey]

I'm just curious... i was bored so i looked at everything in the macro section and sometimes people have a good amount of DOF. Whereas in some of yours it's quite obvious that you are working with a centimeter of focused area. Whats up with that. like on the last fly picture.

[VP-]

I was shooting between F5.6-F8, it had just stopped raining for about 5 minutes and was very dark out, so that being the ambient light was very dim, thus I had to keep the aperture below F11 so as to allow the ambient light to soak in along with the flash, also had to bring the shutter down to 125th to let more light in. Yes I can compensate for this with flash to illuminate the SUBJECT but then the background goes black. Using flash is exposing two times, one exposure for subject, and a second for the background. Thus on a brighter day I could stop down to F11-F16 to get more DOF, also another trick is to shoot from the side to eliminate the shallow dof because a profile shot doesn't require much DOF.

I could have also bumped my ISO up past 200 to let more ambient light in at the same shutter speed also, but I don't have noise reduction software on my mac yet and planned on printing some of these photos.

Can't wait to get out and shoot more street/fine art/people bugs are fun and relaxing for learning technique and such, but I love street and art more, and I need more work in those areas also.

But, do you like these n0r? Honestly?