My semi-annual Frog and Reptile workshop is coming up August 19-20 in Kansas City, so I wanted to share this image from a previous workshop. This frog is the smallest one we photograph. It's about 1/2 inch long, and it belongs to the genus Pumilio. It's hard to believe that in that tiny little body are all the organs necessary for life -- heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, etc. All of the macro shots in this workshop are done with either a ring flash or a twin flash macro setup. We don't use continuous LED lights because they aren't bright enough to allow a small lens aperture unless the ISO is raised too high. I prefer a ring flash, and you can see how the light wraps around the subject such that it simulates diffused lighting. I used a 50mm macro lens, and the camera settings were 1/125, f/32, and 200 ISO. Note that exposure is not a function of the shutter. With flash, the f/stop and ISO determine the exposure as well as the subject-flash distance. In post-processing, I cloned out the reflection of the flash in the eyes of the frog. The workshop takes place in a hotel conference room, but we try and make the environment look natural.
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