Cut a hole in the side of a styrofoam cup for an electrical clip or a clip hackle plier as a fly holder.
Cut a hole in the base of the cup to fit around the lens (cup on the left) or just cut out the enter base of the cup (cup on the left). Put the cup and camera on a table and shine a frosted fluorescent light on the cup.
The styrofoam cup acts as a light tent to diffuse the light for even illumination. I cut a few more holes to let in more light which bounces off of the curved opposite inside surface for more illumination.
The photo below is taken using the macro zoom mode of my Panasonic Lumix waterproof camera. It has a Leica lens and can take amazing photos for a pocket camera.
If your camera has macro zoom ability, I suggest using it to frame the fly to your liking. I use a back or white craft foam for a background depending on the fly I am shooting.
I can take or even make a cup quickly to take photos of flies at fly tying events. I use the tiers own lamp and they are generally amazed at the photo quality. It is a wonderful way to capture a fly you want to tie later.
Nice. Al Campbell used to have a macro photography tutorial here on faol that did much the same thing, using an empty translucent plastic jug…cutouts and all. I have been using a larger “light tent” made from wire hoops and curtain material, that allows changing background colors. Mike Valla’s fly photos are exceptional. I think he’s at the other end of the technology spectrum from the foam cup however–using $400 apiece strobes and reflector/diffusing umbrellas. Hans Weilenmann (Danica) makes the best fly photos in the world I think. Not sure how Hans does it. I suspect he’s using strobes too. But I don’t know.
Thanks! I spent about 30 minutes putting a tube together with materials from around the house and trying it out. This is a great solution for those of us amateur photographers with basic point and shoot cameras. The only problem with it is that the flaws on my flies are much more noticeable!
I believe cup size depends on the minimum focus length of your camera. I actually used two cups – one larger and one smaller – and stacked them together to get a little longer tube. I’d suggest going with a longer cup and you can always move the fly closer to the lens.
Start with a larger cup of you can and the you can put multiple holes in the side at different distances. This allows you to compensate for the macro ability of your cameral and allows allows you mount larger flies farther away.
My waterproof Panasonic Lumix TS2 camera a Macro-zoom so I can fill the frame with the fly.
This was taken with a styrofoam cup (actually two cups taped together to get a little longer focal length), an inexpensive P&S camera, and a desk lamp. I used cardboard (from the back of a tablet) as the background.
As I’ve mentioned, I’m not a photography expert but I’m very happy with the method. The key thing for me is that the setup is very quick and easy and the results are consistent. It’s also easy to change the background and to change lighting by adding or covering holes in the cup.
I very much appreciate you posting this SilverCreek as it’s been a breakthrough for me.
Thank you so much, Silver Creek, for sharing this! I just started playing around with it this evening and it is so simple and fun. I still need to do some fine tuning, but, here are my first attempts: Just “click” on the pictures for a larger picture…
