We were walking in the tropical forest behind Anse Mamin in St. Lucia last summer when it started to rain. We took relative shelter under some dense foliage and shared some time with this beauty and its small attendant. Between the overcast sky and the shadow from the trees, there was not enough light for me to shoot this with a 100mm macro lens, hand held and with enough depth of field to make it work. We had carried a small flash with us (we were there for Joe McNally’s Hot Shoe Lighting Workshop in Paradise Workshop) and a small modified LumiQuest on-flash softbox. We set it up and were able to get a reasonably soft light and could shoot at 1/200th @ f/8.
The surface of the unit is small, so the farther away from the subject, the harder the light and the larger the lit area would be . The closer the unit is to the subject, the greater the effect of fall-off (inverse square law) and so the light would not be quite as even across the flower. So, like everything else in photography (in life?), we compromised. Close enough to be sort of soft and concentrated on the subject, far enough to keep the lighting even. The results are pretty good for the ease and simplicity of the set up. Thanks Joe!