Hi all snooter

I'm building a new version of my snoot in 3D printing. (for Retra) I have a Retra Snoot but I want to build my own model. ;)

I'm now at the moment of the choice of the shape of the light.

1) a disk with very sharp edges (when the light is at focus)

2) a disk with smooth edge

3) a disk with very smooth edge

What did you use, like?

The other question is wich size of the disk is the best for you ?

I plan to have the posibility of some extra shape and size of the light.

Thank you for your help

Hugues

Hey Hugues

A fun project……

I use a snoot a lot for the majority of my macro shots. Generally I find soft edges work best. This gets away from the “spotlight look” and is closer to highlighting the subject in a more subtle way.

Of course once a while a spotlight is the ideal lighting style but, for me anyway, this is much less often.

To an extent though I’ve found you can vary a hard/soft edge by moving the snoot closer or nearer to the subject - and using a mask to fine-tune the width of the light. The closer to the subject, the more sharp the edge; the further away, the less sharp.

1 hour ago, TimG said:

To an extent though I’ve found you can vary a hard/soft edge by moving the snoot closer or nearer to the subject - and using a mask to fine-tune the width of the light. The closer to the subject, the more sharp the edge; the further away, the less sharp.

Yes of course... I'm trying some lense combination in the snoot to find the "best" solution and working distance.

What are the best distance for the snoot for you?

The idea is to have a "large" snoot-light to take a fish head or such big subject... and with an add-on change to much more tiny light point ... 5 or 10 mm diameter for the small subject.

The challenge is also to avoid light reflexion going outside of the disk of light.

I bought a Retra Snoot from Luko I wanted to show how it is build and work There are a lot of reflexion i didn't like this
I make some test with different pieces in the tube to reduce the reflexion, also change the lenght of the tube

Some small changes have big effects... it's more or less alway a suprise to show the result of changes

I’m not sure I can suggest a best distance. I do find it’s more a case of “suck it and see”. So much depends on the size of the subject, its background and what you’re trying to not light - and how you want to light: from above, from the side, from behind.

What works for me is to have the snooted strobe on my left hand with the clamps set so that the snoot can be adjusted relatively easily. Right hand on the shutter release. I take a couple of images, check exposure, decide if I’m using the right mask, the angle of lighting - and then work the subject adjusting angle and distance. Then apologise to the subject for possibly blinding it.

I’m using a D500 and either a 60mm or 105mm lens. I do find that from time to time checking the results on the LCD screen, I lose the subject! Especially with the 105mm. And I do keep thinking how nice it would be to have a mirrorless body with on-screen replay. But that’s not an “investment “ I currently want to make.

Perhaps locking the snoot strobe arm to a distance might help a bit with that. However in my earlier snooting days, I tried a locked snoot, partly in desperation (!) but found it just didn’t work.

I do think flexibility is the way to go. Experiment. A lot of the time the image isn’t quite right. But the Bingos! can be fabulous.

On reflections, are you thinking reflections from parts of the background? I’ve never seen reflections resulting from the snoot itself. Background ones are sometimes unavoidable but generally really careful composition (yeah, not always possible) and mask choice can overcome that.

28 minutes ago, TimG said:

On reflections, are you thinking reflections from parts of the background? I’ve never seen reflections resulting from the snoot itself. Background ones are sometimes unavoidable but generally really careful composition (yeah, not always possible) and mask choice can overcome that.

This in a photo with the retra snoot on one of my retra,

My question is if this will be seen or not on the "real" underwater photo

This is with focus point on the light




you can see that the light is not uniform

With my poc snoot

The light is much more uniform

The edge are smooth

for this picture I putted a small extension


The main light point have a really sharp egde

There is a big zone arround with some lite light

But you can see that I have no reflexion, rings of light

38 minutes ago, TimG said:

What works for me is to have the snooted strobe on my left hand with the clamps set so that the snoot can be adjusted relatively easily. Right hand on the shutter release.

That is exactly how I do