Sony 50 mm macro lens and lighting for macro video

Last crawled date: 4 years, 3 months ago

Got a Sony 50 mm macro lens?
Got and Sony A7 body?
Interested in macro videography?
I've been trying my hand at slo mo macro video of bugs, with a frame speed of 120 fps, a shutter speed of about 1/2000th of a second, and an aperture of f/16 for depth of field.,
And a max ISO of 1,600,
For this I need a LOT of light. After much trial an error I've arrived at the set up show in the photos. The lights are bike lamps with remote batteries that I carry in my camera bay connected by long leads to the camera slung around my neck. Generally I have the lens set to 1:2 meaning that the bug is have full size on the sensor. This gives a bit of room in the shot for bug movement of take of without immediately leaving the frame. Also a little more depth of field.
The bike lamps are SolarStorm 15000LM 3xXM-U2 LED Head Bicycle Light Bike Lamp Rechargeable 4*18650. I bought them on eBay.
The lamps come with a bracket for attaching to handlebars. This is easy to remove. Retain the screw.
Here's a video that I show with this set up: https://youtu.be/EtBVuCoQIo4