My next frog and reptile workshop is coming up the first weekend in June in St. Louis, and I wanted to show you how tiny some of the dart frogs are compared to a pencil. To take this closeup in which the frog fills a significant part of the frame, I used a 50mm macro lens plus two extension tubes. In order to show as much detail as possible on these small subjects, I tell the workshop participants to use the smallest aperture available to them -- usually f/32 -- for maximum depth of field. This requires a lot of light, and that's why a ring flash or twin-flash macro setup is ideal. The working distance for this picture was only about 5 inches. I set the flash to eTTL and the camera to manual exposure mode. The camera and flash communicate electronically to produce a correct exposure. The white balance is set to either 'daylight' or 'flash'. Because the shutter speed is the sync speed (usually 1/200 or 1/250) and the flash duration is very brief, all the pictures can be hand held.
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