A few of my friends inspired me to start a fun mini project using my Olympus E510, ZD 50mm macro lens and Olympus ring flash.

Just set manual exposure to f/8, ISO 100, 1/180th sec, and set manual focus. Make sure the flash is set to TTL then rack out the lens to its closest focus. Then just move in and out until you have achieved focus … now this is a bit tricky given you have a subject that moves a little and your depth of field is very narrow still.

Here is a sample, … when Irish eyes are smiling 🙂

For more beautiful eyes, see my little project on my website, in particular, the interesting distortion of the ring flash catchlight when photographing eyes with contact lenses on and those with subtle corneal distortions.

ps… not all are perfectly focused but my subjects would only tolerate a couple of tries, so I decided to accept a few less than perfect to thank them for volunteering.

also, these images have been cropped ~50% and resized for the web -use of the EC-20 2x teleconverter would enable images with minimal cropping.