@jerry Once you get it dialed in, I think the difference you'll find is the stop motion effect of the flash .. might help if you're outside and there's wind. Definitely agree with @ithoughtisawa2 recommendation of bouncing the flash to diffuse it .. a piece of white pasteboard or even an index card rubber banded to a regular flash and bent a bit works nicely. Or go nuts and get a softbox ...
@acsawdey@ithoughtisawa2 I have a herd of soft boxes. I was using these with the white diffuser panel attached to the front. I think the flashes need to be dialed back. They are each about 3x the power of an average on camera flash
@jerry@acsawdey That's a lot of light. I would dial 1 back and bounce the other off the ceiling. If you don't already know it, light falls off with the square of the distance. Bouncing off the ceiling will add a lot of distance compared to the current setup and reduce the light significantly. @acsawdey I used to always carry a custom cut piece of pasteboard with me to rubber band to the strobe. Although most of the time I shot natural light and pushed the processing if needed. This was back in the film days. They were going onto newsprint so overall quality wasn't a huge issue.
I don’t know if you’re using TTL metering in the camera but with so many light sources just going manual mode on everything — then you can dial in what you want pretty easy. Sounds like you are on this path already from your results so far.
@acsawdey@ithoughtisawa2 the controller does a nice job of letting me dial it back. I am going to try experimenting with using the larger studio flashes to illuminate a background and focus on using the macro flashes to illuminate the flowers. I have some reflectors and larger soft boxes to try too. I’ll be doing some reading, particularly on how to better use my flash controller
@jerry Listen, lad. I took up this flash photography from nothing. When I started here, all there was was video lights. Other photographers said I was daft to take photos of my orchids with a flash, but I took it all the same, just to show 'em. It came out underexposed. So, I took a second one. That came out overexposed. So, I took a third one. That one was properly exposed but came out flat and it had no background, but the fourth one... came out just right! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest flashes on these orchids!
@jerry I would bounce them off something. The images look kind of flat too, but that may just be the overexposure. Bouncing them should give it a little more depth.
When I used to do photojournalism I would put my hand over half the strobe to reduce the output if I had to. Stopping it down, or raising the shutter speed would be preferred but sometimes you have to go with whatever works.