Need help in white subject shooting

[blacksmith]

Sometime I see the beautiful white insect like this guy below. I've tried to shoot with white as main color but it's not perfect. The white can never turn into "pure white" when shooting, especially when combine with the green.

I may have problem with the flash or white balance. I really need your suggestion for this problem.

My gear: MPE65+MT24 with 50D Canon. Shooting normally at ISO 100, 1/200s and f8-11.


1.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3544/3692819065_849a7b1168_o.jpg

2.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2656/3693623022_e7ebd8ffd6_o.jpg

3.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2623/3693622884_6c2d72aaf5_o.jpg

4.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2543/3692820189_ebef3939e0_o.jpg

5. Close to the detail, better:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2631/3692819945_211716abaa_o.jpg

6. The difference between green and white make my camera+flash confused:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2547/3693623130_e39420001f_o.jpg

Thanks for your all kind comments!

[Lord Vetinari]

Lovely plant hopper shots.
Very unusual to get a white insect !

Re the white, I'm not sure there is any answer to this really.
I suspect if the bug really is pure white, it will pick up colour reflections from the surface it is on via the flash anyway so all the shots except the last I think are pretty good from that POV. Not sure if you tried to correct something in the last shot, but that is rather odd looking.

With my flash shots I shoot AWB and nearly always just drop the colour temp during RAW processing to around 5600'c to get rid of the extra flash "warmth". This seems to work on 99% of my shots- with shots with significant amounts of white or black in them it actually makes no difference. The only time it does not work is shots of bugs on my car (metallic silver grey) which go a bit blue if I do this and the shot as is, is fine.

Brian V.

[blacksmith]

I do appreciate your quick reply!

The last shot was the MT24 Flash effect, i set 1:4 ratio. A small light was reach to the white plan hopper (cause it is 1/4 power) and another flash was 4 times more powerful which reach to the green object (45 degree of flash from the lens). A little PS added for darker white insect, but not much!

4900 of K was used in RAW post process. I will find another white subject and stick with your suggestion to see what happen.

Thanks again, Brian!