Macro Photography
Photography capturing
Macro Photography
Small, But Complex Subjects
What is Macro Photography?
Rough definition of macro photography is that the subject is photographed at 1:1 magnification, in other words, the subject is life-sized compared to the camera sensor.
How I started
I have had a high interest in shooting macro photos since my beginning photography interest. A long time ago, I captured the first macros with my first digital compact camera which was some 5.0 MPX Minolta model. When I bought my first DSLR Nikon D5200 which I still use, I found it is much harder to properly capture any macro image. At first, I didn’t understand much what lens specifications serve for, especially lens’s focal length. I bought my camera with kit lens 18-55mm and 35mm prime lens. I figured out that those lenses are not very good for macro photography. Then I started searching to buy some dedicated macro lens, but I found that it was too expensive for me. I am still a beginner and do not want to invest a lot of money, still photography is just a hobby. But that’s no mean that I should completely abandon macro shooting. Hopefully there is a much cheaper solution to transfer your lenses to macro lens.
My rig
First I decided to buy macro extension tubes, which are basically rings that you put between your camera and lens. It cost around 20€. What it does, it puts your lens further away from the camera sensor and magnifies the photography subject to the sensor. You can find plenty of descriptions and information on the internet about how it works. Usually they come in different sizes. I bought three tubes which are active, which means it has all connectors and wires so the camera still communicates with your lens. That means you can still use camera autofocus and automatic shutter speed etc. Does it help? Well, not a lot. I played around with these macro tubes which was really fun, but I didn't capture any significantly good photos with them.
One of the biggest issues with macro shooting overall is very tiny and shallow small depth of field. That means you will be facing with a very small part of the image that is in perfect focus, usually just around 1mm. Second thing is poor light. You will need to add some kind of secondary light source to your subject.
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| Shallow Depth of Field |
So I started to look into some different kinds of solutions and I found that a reverse lens kit is maybe one of the solutions. These ring adapters are going again to your camera but the other side of the adapter has threaded end like lens filter has. Basically it allows you to connect your lens opposite to your camera. This was very odd to me, but surprisingly it works very well and it costs just a few €.
Of course when you connect lenses like that, you will lose all of the camera's intelligence and the camera will not recognize the lens at all. Who cares, macro photography should be totally manual anyway. I found that longer lenses will work better with reverse rings. I tried with my wide angle 10-20mm, it creates a very great magnification but depth of field is almost useless. With my 35mm prime, it was fine, but with the kit lens works the best at 55m, the longest focal length. After a lot of shooting, I saw I was getting better images than with macro tubes, but still I didn’t solve the light problem. I still get very dark images with poor quality. There are plenty of macro lights and flashes on the market, but I decided to create some kind of deflector and use camera kit flash. It was a piece of paper cardboard rounded and taped with a steel wire which I mounted somehow on my camera. It looked very funny and everyone laughed at me when they saw me hunting bugs with that. Now is broken since it was from a paper, I need to create new one, you have a lot of examples how to do it, just search online macro flash deflector.
My tactics
The thing is when you have your lens counter mounted on the camera, you need to regulate the lens's aperture - the opening of a lens. I use one finger to move this small handle on a lens and regulate the amount of light which is entering inside your sensor. More the light - focal length will be smaller and opposite, less light or smaller aperture - focal length will be larger. But you need to find a fine spot between both of that. Usually you wouldn't know if a photo is good till you saw the captured image on your camera display. That’s why I always capture a few images with different apertures each time in very short of time because, you don’t want to lose your active subject and in mine case this is usually bugs. Even though I got a little better depth of field, if I want to get more of the subject in focus, then I need to stack a couple of images. Those few below are stacked of 3 to 5 images with different focus points.
I enjoy shooting spiders a lot because they are more passive than other bugs like flies, butterflies, ants etc.
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