Instead of trying with so many light setups, the best bet may be as others have suggested and try using a flash source, either remote triggered or with commander mode on a master (commander) flash. If you're worried about colors being retained in their natural appearance you need to make sure that you are using the proper white balance, this will help dramatically in post processing when you go to correct it. Your camera will have some preset modes on it, and "auto" for the most part will be what you use as a general setup, but when you shoot in raw mode you can use a program like Adobe Lightroom 4 to go in and reprocess the image under a different white balance to see how the colors turn out - In most cases if you try a strobe setup you will need to set your White balance to "flash" in order to balance the colors.

Others have already pointed it out, but if you're looking for reasons why the subject is not fully in focus, you have whats called a field of focus. This is the area that is in front of and behind the focal point that will be in focus giving you "depth of field". Your depth of field is directly related to your aperature rating. Most reptile shoots should be done in the range of f/11 - f/14 in order to have a large enough depth of field. Other things that effect your depth of field is your focal length (Wide angle has a greater DOF, Telephoto sides of any lens will have a shallower effect)



I took this image a day or so ago using a softbox, with an external flash mounted on camera. The soft box had a black velvet background. Now I'm not thrilled by this image by any means thanks to a brand new snake that wouldn't stand still or stop striking. None the less, this is an example of what can be done. This was shot on the telephoto side of a 17-40mm prime lens (f/4). I shot this fairly close, and this is a fairly large snake at 2+ ft for my set up. The settings used were, F/11 ISO 100 (Your camera may only go down to 200 if memory serves) Exposure 1/100 (this is the shutter speed).

I'd reccommend going with a Canon speedlight in order to boost your lighting, and one with high speed sync will allow you to shoot at faster shutters than 1/250 if needed for rare occassions. However, on the low side you're looking at $270 for a good flash that will handle the amount of light and speed you'd desire.



Another example - this beast was shot in a softbox with no external lighting. Camera was a Canon 7D with a 100mm F/2.8 Macro lens. The settings were: F/29 ISO 100 Exposure 1/250 and the subject was about .9 meters away. The lighting used for the shot not on the box was my Canon 580ex ii, shot in raw and white balance processed post shot.

Lastly, if you have a smart phone, invest in a mobile Depth of Field Calculator for your phone. It will allow you to calculate what aperture you need to get the desired amount of subject in focus.

There's a lot of other information out there that you can use as a reference point hopefully this gets you on track to where you're headed.

One more thing about blurry images. You have to have a shutter speed that is equal to 1/1 for every MM of focal length with a minimum of 1/100 for handheld NON VR (or in canons case IS or sigmas case OS) lens. If you have IS on your lens, you should be ok going as low as 1/40, but you still have to worry about subject movement. 1/250 will freeze MOST action, 1/2000 is the sweet spot for almost anything, but sometimes achieving that with the desired depth of field is next to impossible. HOWEVER



It can be done with higher end bodies capable of pushing ISO limits (canons new 5D Mark III can producing amazing results up to 20,000 ISO rating - the camera you have will hold its details up to about 400 ISO then start to become unusable by 800-1600 ISO - but th is is comparing a $500 body to a $3500 body that just came out -) This Bat image was taken at night in pitch darkness with a pre-focus done on the feeder and a remote triggered from a distance in order to allow them to behave naturally. This was f/11 ISO 500 and exposure of 1/640. Play with your ISO and see what works for your taste. If you can handle the grain of ISO 800, you'll vastly increase your shutter speed compared to ISO 200!