The world of close up photography is something that I had always wanted to explore. The semi surreal kind of shots that you can get with a macro lens or by adding extension tubes can be quite beautiful. As with anything else you photograph, light is an important element to consider. If your ambition is to create clean and well lit product photos (perhaps for selling products on a website) you don’t necessarily need to invest in a strobe system for this purpose.  To understand how you can achieve great results with a very simple setup, we need to remind ourselves of a simple concept in lighting that is relevant.  The concept is the difference between hard and soft light.