soxfan941 Loc: Lakewood Ranch, FL

Equipment; Fuji x-t30 with Laowa 65mm macro lens and Meike 320 speedlite.

Settings; Aperture F/8, Shutter 180th, ISO 160 and White balance 5600K. Camera and flash in manual mode with flash set to 1/16 power.

So I'm the Florida sun with the lens set to 2:1 magnification. I move to within a couple of inches of a very patient ladybug and see only blackness in the viewfinder. So, I open the lens to F/2.8, now I can the bug but now I have unacceptable DoF.
What am I doing wrong? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

jamesl Loc: Pennsylvania

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You have to get more light on the subject so that you can go back to the smaller aperture. You can increase your ISO or lower your shutter speed. You can also try increasing the power on the flash. You can combine several of the options until you get the exposure you are looking for.

soxfan941 Loc: Lakewood Ranch, FL

I got it. I had the "Preview exp./wb in manual mode" turn on to to "preview exp./wb."
Solved by setting to "OFF."

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

I was going to say something like that. I have a Fujifilm X-100T and it has all sorts of weird functions, settings, and features none of my five DSLR Pentax cameras have. The Fuji can be a challenge. But I do like the images I eventually get. I should have bought an X-T3 at the time.

PAR4DCR Loc: A Sunny Place

You might get more suggestions/answers posting this in the macro section of UHH.

Don

soxfan941 Loc: Lakewood Ranch, FL

Thanks Don, but I solved the problem.

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

When everything fails it is time to read the camera's instructions manual.

agillot

Set at f16 or higher , flash at near full power , and adjust with the ISO , since you wont be cropping much , 1000 or higher.Since you have to deal with dof , you need a lot of light . The speed setting does not affect the flash , but the F stop does .On macro , you have a narrow dof , the f stop setting will help that .

Tomfl101 Loc: Mount Airy, MD

I can’t speak to your Fuji lens specifically but my Canon 100 macro has “bellows extension” factor. As you focus closer to a small object and the lens is “zoomed” farther from the film plane to achieve focus, you get exposure fall-off and must either open the aperture or slow the shutter to compensate. Back in the day I had an Mamyia RB67. It had a scale on the body that indicated the amount of exposure drop as determined by the extension of the bellows. This could be part of your issue.

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

Actually, you are doing everything right. Don't change anything other than this recommendation. The only thing that I would change is to shoot at f/11 for more depth. The reason your viewfinder is dark is because of the preview setting. Turn it OFF.

You can disable exposure preview so the exposure for the viewfinder is independent of the actual exposure (with the flash). If the LCD is distracting, you can set to EVF only so the display stays dark and you need to use the electronic viewfinder.

What you're looking for is found in the Screen Setup menu. Look for an option called [PREVIEW EXP./WB IN MANUAL MODE] and set it to "Off" or "Preview WB".

Picture Taker Loc: Michigan Thumb

Look-up Mike Moats, has a lot of info

Don, the 2nd son Loc: Crowded Florida

Been there, done that. We were looking through the lens stopped down (DOF preview).

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

The "problem" is that you are using flash AND a manual aperture lens. This makes for a few added challenges.

First of all, apparently you are working in a relatively low light situation where the flash is needed to provide sufficient lighting. I.e., the flash would be the primary light source (ambient light is too low for proper exposure).

If you were using a lens with electronic aperture control, such as the Fuji 60mm f/2.4 Macro, the lens' aperture is maintained wide open until the actual moment of exposure. It then stops down to your chosen aperture. This allows you a brighter viewfinder to be able to see the subject for composition and focus. A lens like the Laowa 65mm doesn't do that. It's aperture is completely manual. As you set it smaller, it actually closes down reducing the amount of light entering the camera.

The viewfinder is further darkened by "light fall off" at high magnification. The added extension of the lens makes light travel farther, which reduces it's strength. (Light loses strength exponentially... meaning that doubling of distance will reduce light to 1/4 its original strength. I don't have that lens, but do have a Canon 65mm lens with high magnification capabilities. It probably isn't exactly the same, there are physical differences in the lenses, but when my Canon 65mm is set to 2:1 and f/8, the lens' "effective" f-stop as far as exposure is concerned is f/24! That's a lot of light lost to fall off!

So that's what is happening. But you probably want to know what to do about it. There are several possibilities:

1. Use that lens just as you have been, opening the aperture as wide as possible to compose and focus, then stop down manually prior to exposure. This is slow and risks bumping precise focus. Your subject may move before you can complete the shot. Plus there's a limit to how much you can open up the lens, so in some situations may not be enough.

It's tricky, but doable. I used an adapted, vintage 90mm lens for this shot of a bee on a California poppy...


That adapted lens is fully manual... both focus and aperture control.... much like your Laowa lens I probably took 75 shots to get a few I liked. Many missed focus or the subject was half out of frame, flying away. Note that compared to you I wasn't using nearly as high magnification (less than 1:1), but was using a smaller f/11 aperture, higher ISO 400, I did not use flash at all and my subject was in full sun. (As a side note: I had to set the camera to "release shutter without lens", because it doesn't "know" when a non-electronic lens is installed).

2. Set the lens to the desired aperture, then increase your ISO. This assumes your camera has an electronic viewfinder (EVF) and that it provides "exposure simulation" (rear LCD monitor can be used on some cameras with optical viewfinders). The risk with this is that a high ISO will add noise to the image. It also will change the nature of the image. Ambient light will become more prominent and the flash will perform as "fill", rather than "full". Here are some examples of how the lighting makes for different image styles...

FULL FLASH (hides a busy background by minimizing ambient light)


FILL FLASH (exposure partly relies upon ambient light, allowing more of background to be seen)


MACRO FULL FLASH (very high magnification, approx. 3.5:1, ringlight flash set to 8:1 ratio)


MACRO FILL FLASH (low magnification, twinlight flash set to 1:1 ratio, black felt background behind subject)


3. Use the camera and lens in the same way, but use a different light source that provides some sort of continuous lighting rather than flash. There are a number of ways this can be done. For example, maybe just find better ambient lighting. Or use a reflector to bounce more ambient light onto your subject. Or use continuous supplemental lighting like an LED panel.

AMBIENT LIGHT ALONE


AMBIENT LIGHT ALONE (waited for sweet late afternoon light and was able to position subject in front of a darker, shaded background)


AMBIENT LIGHT + BOUNCED LIGHT (primarily used to create the catchlight in the bee's eye)


4. Buy a different lens... one that has an electronically controlled aperture, such as the Fuji 60mm f/2.4 Macro or Fuji 80mm f/2.8. The "problem" here is that these lenses are more expensive and they don't offer as high magnification. In fact, the Laowa can do 2:1 (2X life size), while the Fuji 80mm can do 1:1 (1X) and the Fuji 60mm only 1:2 (0.5X). You can add macro extension tubes to those Fuji lenses to push them to higher magnification, though it would take a lot to get the Fuji 60mm anywhere near 2X!

While those Fuji lenses also have autofocus, personally I think that's less of a priority for macro. I often turn AF off and just focus manually. It's often faster and easier. But for ease of use in a wide variety of situations, an electronically controlled lens aperture is preferable to manual only, like the Laowa.

FWIW, I mostly use Auto White Balance. Especially when working in mixed lighting situations. I'm able to do that because I always shoot RAW or RAW+JPG, so can easily tweak WB, if needed. In certain situations I will use a Custom White Balance. I NEVER use any of the WB presets. Those are wrong more often than they are right. I also never manually set color temp. (It's only part of the WB equation... there also is "tint".) Auto WB or Custom WB... that's it. (P.S. I also carry a neutral WB target as well as a set of Warm Cards for "filter effects" with Custom WB.)

flyboy61 Loc: The Great American Desert

Something I just discovered...I was getting TOO close for the minimum focus distance of some of my lenses. I backed off a couple if inches, and Voila! Sharp pixes! It's tempting to want to shove your lens up the left nostril of your subject, but not very productive. YMMV!