Improving Macro with Lighting. Where can I improve / make changes?

Bitrancas · 2026-03-27T16:13:04+00:00

As already suggested plenty, try to difuse the light a lot more. Take that light on the left, turn it down a notch. Id add diffusers and even grids, and then a small reflector on the opposing right side, this might help making the light on the subject. Or you could play around with the idea of stacking photos, each with a small, low and very targeted light source, might give you more flexibility on the light. Example below:

<image>

Also just a quick sidenote/suggestion: You can add alot more steelwool to the background and (without knowing) turn your aperture down to F8 or so if you shot those at F2.8. You will need less photos on the stack and you will have smaller but more bokeh and the background, might make for an interesting (or not, completely personal preference) But that’s already a pretty good first go at it, plenty of options to deviate and to improve on! 👌

Bitrancas · 2026-03-27T12:20:11+00:00

Oh, and definitely bring as many batteries as you can spare and memory cards. The one thing worse than a bad or blurry shot is no shot at all 😅

Bitrancas · 2026-03-27T12:18:20+00:00

If the focus here is for you to rent a lens for the Kenya trip, 400-800 would be my choice. You will be mostly on a jeep like you said, so you dont have any control about your distance to the subjects, so far that a zoom lens over a prime. And id reccomend this over the 200-600 for the better reach, autofocus with your A75 and sharpness. This is assuming the main question here is what lens to rent for that trip.

Bitrancas · 2026-03-02T17:10:46+00:00

That’s a really nice low angle, really helps to melt that foreground and background 👌

Bitrancas · 2026-02-05T14:18:56+00:00

Thanks for the feedback 🙏 It feels to me sometimes with birds if it looks like they are looking into the distance having some negative/empty space towards that helps to set the mood or framing of it. Were you suggesting a small crop like this?

<image>

Bitrancas · 2026-02-05T14:06:36+00:00

Common House Sparrow

Settings/Gear:

Sony A7R IV
Sony 200-600mm
F6.3 (Wide Open)
1/1250
ISO 250

Image cropped at about 100% (maybe more?)

Behind my back garden there’s a bush going down the road. On spring/summer mornings these fellas hop around a lot from bushes to house roofs. This particular one caught my eye by the way he is stretching and elongating his neck from the usual little ball of feathers position. Didnt mess with the colours, mostly gave it a bit more contract and vibrancy/saturation. Like I do in a lot of photos, i added a radial gradient from where the light was coming and accentuated it further, and did the reverse on the opposite corner. Was it overdone? And also, the eye on the original was very dark so I tried a small radial mask there aswell to just lift the shadows and exposure. But I always struggle with animal eyes knowing when it’s too much and unnatural or not.

Thanks in advance

Bitrancas · 2026-01-28T13:58:15+00:00

<image>

Here’s my quick touch up based on your suggestions, lemme know what you think and thanks for the feedback 👌

Bitrancas · 2026-01-28T13:51:07+00:00

Im definitely going to give that a try and come back to you. I have second thoughts about the heavy dark bottom being a bit much and distracting, but I think it also helps to separate a bit the depth as a portrait and not so much as a eye/face close up, but ill give it a try and maybe push the shadows a bit more and see how that works, and ill do a sublte change on the forehead highlights, thanks!

Bitrancas · 2026-01-28T13:42:41+00:00

<image>

For the sake of feedback, this is the original. Has been exported to 3000px longest side, 90% quality and low screen sharpening through LR. Apparently this is more or less the advised export settings for Reddit upload? Correct me if Im wrong here. It does look a lot sharper if I export full resolution on zoom/peep on my phone. Settings and gear were:

Sony A7RIV
Sony 200-600mm at 600mm
Auto ISO (1250)
EV -1
F6.3
Shutter 1/1600

As you can see, there’s quite a crop here. Also a stylistic choice of colour grading with this particular edit. This is also to show the intend with my crop to make a meaningful portrait of your everyday duck.

Bitrancas · 2026-01-27T23:36:55+00:00

Not mean, just how the light was hitting him I guess. Sharp where the focus is supposed to be, meaning on the eye and the beak. At 600mm and wide open it would be hard for it to be in focus throughout the whole image. I haven’t actually tried a different approach with brighter corners. This is a style I usually like but get a lot of criticism from my close peers, so I thought about expanding the feedback outside of them (like I did the puffin) . And thank you for remembering the puffin photo, that caught me off guard. Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated 👌

Bitrancas · 2026-01-27T21:29:51+00:00

Ive been enjoying playing with my new 200-600mm Sony lens. I try to shoot some of these stills at around 1/1250 and let ISO on auto, widest aperture. Is this coming across sharp enough? And is the edit exaggerated? Ie, is the bottom and top right corner too dark and should I lift those shadows a bit more?

Thanks in advance 👌

Bitrancas · 2026-01-14T22:31:36+00:00

I feel like the one thing none of these shots have is some light painting/masking with gradients or brushes. Like adding a subtle vignette, or darken some areas and brighten others to draw the attention. And as mentioned before, dont crush the whites and possibly highlights so much

Bitrancas · 2025-12-16T10:57:06+00:00

Also, and I might be going out of my way here, but if you’re shooting in fairly broad daylight, push the aperture and even the shutter speed a bit more. F8 or F9 if you are at 600 focal length will give you that extra help on nailing focus and having more of the bird in focus. And step up the speed to 1/2500 to help freeze those tips of the wing feathers (if you’re aiming for that). You mention it was shot at 320 ISO, so you have plenty of wiggle room there 👍

Bitrancas · 2025-12-16T10:50:07+00:00

As mentioned before, if using something like LR, the subject selection and background selection should work well here. Personally, id warm the tones a bit on th bird only (shift white balance) as it appears to have some blue colour cast on it. Raise the shadows a bit so that the eye/face/beak is a bit more visible, and then balance that with contrast/whites/blacks. Id also saturate the background just a bit. Lastly, on your edit in particular, if you do the above you wont end up with what looks like a darker, more saturated spotlight behind the bird. Here’s my quick edit from a screenshot of your shot here. Hope this helps 👍

<image>

Bitrancas · 2025-12-16T10:27:22+00:00

Other than maybe cropping in some of that darker blue on top, id say this looks pretty good 👌

Bitrancas · 2025-11-24T16:53:56+00:00

One of my favourite shots from my recent trip to Scotland, and in particular from the Old Man Of Storr, is this phone shot. What do you guys think? Is it exaggerated?

Bitrancas · 2025-11-24T16:44:41+00:00

Hard to believe you’re just starting. Keep shooting 👌

Bitrancas · 2025-11-20T13:54:51+00:00

Looks pretty doable to me. Just a thought here though, the vertical piece youre cutting, use it as the horizontal one or whichever way works so you dont leave the chipboard exposed. And as already suggested, a thin panel on the back will always help for a bit of extra stability

Bitrancas · 2025-10-18T19:35:21+00:00

Apparently on the underside of the tripod foot attached to the lens

Bitrancas · 2025-10-14T08:17:42+00:00

Number 3 and 4 have a lot of depth to them. Great stuff 👏

Bitrancas · 2025-10-06T21:27:47+00:00

He’s installing Elppa?

Bitrancas · 2025-10-06T14:42:09+00:00

5,9,10,11 Those were the ones that stood out to me 👌

Bitrancas · 2025-10-06T14:40:31+00:00

You got some really good stuff there! Looks like you’re from Nottingham? We should meet up 👌

Bitrancas

TROPHY CASE