Another Use For The Flashlight

In my last post, I wrote about how having a small flashlight helped me to make a photograph better. I have been playing around with one ever since I read Les Saucier's flashlight article.

I recently found another benefit to having a small LED light. The other day I was making some macro photographs using a 180mm macro lens with a 1.4 TC and focusing manually. I was also using the flashlight to throw some supplementary light on the subject of the image. I had focused and was playing with the direction of lighting when it occurred to me that the light might also help with focusing.

So, I tried a little experiment. I focused manually, then added extra light on the subject and tried to see if the focus was still optimal. I was flabbergasted to find that the vast majority of times, even though I had been sure that my focus was right on, it, in fact, was able to be improved by re-focusing with the added light on the subject. Perhaps being off by a tad is not a big deal for many images, but for macro work it certainly is.....it can make or break the picture.

I don't know if it is my age, my eyes, or what....but I do know that now I will be using the flashlight to help me get that focus just the way I want it when shooting macro images.

The more I use this little light, the mire I like it and the more uses I find for it.