Macro flash

I photographed this wild looking frog, a Crowned tree frog from Costa Rica, at my semi-annual frog and reptile workshop this past weekend in St. Louis.  For intricately detailed macro subjects, I feel that complete depth of field is required to show the compelling color, texture, and detail with tack sharp clarity.  In order to use the smallest lens aperture, i.e. f/22 or f/32, a lot of light is needed. Otherwise the shutter becomes too slow.  Therefore, I teach in the workshop that the best approach is to use a ring flash.  This provides a lot of light, thus enabling the use of a small aperture.  In addition, the type of light produced by this kind of unit envelopes the subject and fills in all the dark shadows.  The camera and flash settings that consistently yield correct exposures are:  Camera on manual exposure mode, flash on eTTL or iTTL, and the lens set to f/22 or f/32.  I set the shutter speed to the sync speed which is typically 1/200 or 1/250, and my lens was a 50mm macro.  I didn't need a tripod because the brief flash duration ensures a sharp picture.  A tripod would just get in the way.  Any change of position of the frog would require a new tripod placement, and that would be too inhibiting.