Shooting pics with modeling light

I posted this originally in the beginner's forum without much response, so I thought I'd try it herel

My emergency/backup camera is the Olympus SP-350 which is nice for many things but not really close/small macro. (Oddly you can get closer to a small subject, and fill the screen better, with full zoom rather than w/a, but e'en so I'm usually about 5" away from the subject.)

I've tried three diopters, Inon, an old MX-10 c/u lens, adapted, and an older Hydrophoto #1 diopter, but still can't get much better than roughly 1:2.

The SP-350 has a super macro setting which lets me get the proximity to the subject I want, but it disables the interior flash which I use to trigger my slave(s) via fiber optic cable.

So I thought I'd try using super macro with a modeling light mounted on the housing's cold shoe and see what I get. Has anybody tried this, and if so, how'd it work? What kind of modeling light did you use? I'm looking for one that's small (read cheap) with even light distribution to avoid hot and cold spots.

I posted this originally in the beginner's forum without much response, so I thought I'd try it herel

My emergency/backup camera is the Olympus SP-350 which is nice for many things but not really close/small macro. (Oddly you can get closer to a small subject, and fill the screen better, with full zoom rather than w/a, but e'en so I'm usually about 5" away from the subject.)

I've tried three diopters, Inon, an old MX-10 c/u lens, adapted, and an older Hydrophoto #1 diopter, but still can't get much better than roughly 1:2.

The SP-350 has a super macro setting which lets me get the proximity to the subject I want, but it disables the interior flash which I use to trigger my slave(s) via fiber optic cable.

So I thought I'd try using super macro with a modeling light mounted on the housing's cold shoe and see what I get. Has anybody tried this, and if so, how'd it work? What kind of modeling light did you use? I'm looking for one that's small (read cheap) with even light distribution to avoid hot and cold spots.

In a nutshell I've seen folks use a modeling light when their strobe failed or for just effects by opening up the aperture. Your problem is this: You'll want to use F8 for the aperture setting to get a decent DOF on the shot. This will effectively will give you a nice black, completely black, photo. Strobes put out a tremendous amount of light for a small period of time. Much, much brighter than any handheld torch. So you could open up the aperture (F2.8) but then your photo would have the hotspot on the subject because the light will not be diffused. You'd be better stacking some Inon lenses together. BTW, when you stack the lenses you'll want your camera in regular mode, not macro or supermacro.

My solution when I owned this camera was the FL-20 Olympus Flash in a housing. As long as you have an external strobe electrically wired to the camera's hotshoe you can fire it in supermacro mode. The FL-20 housing was a pain if you ever wanted to use another strobe but it worked okay for macro.

I've played with using a 10w HID as a light source (no other flash/strobe) for my P&S camera once or twice (occasions where the strobe died, for instance). Shots were marginally ok, could actually get some interesting effects here and there, actually. But the shutter had to be quite slow to get enough light into the shot, so without a way to get a rock-solid still hold on the camera, the shots ended up a bit blurry.

Not a good alternative to a strobe, IMO, outside of dire circumstances. Without a very strong light like the HID, I don't think it would be a useful method at all.

Thanks! These and Aquaplanes examples over in beginners' forum really helped out!