Macro photography 101

Over the past 2 years i been interested in macro photography..It started with shooting buds then its progressed to insects..Its a passion of mine which i try to spend a min of 3-4hours a day macroing insects..i dont have to work so i can spend all my time on this hobbie.Over the last 2 years i been hard at it working ,reading/studding macro photography.
Over the next few weeks i hope to put every thing in this thread that i have learnt over the past 2 years..

awesome! ill be back for this... love macros! specially WEED Macros! lol

i got my learning joint rolled and waiting!

What is True Macro Photography?

What is True Macro Photography?

What is True Macro Photography?

Although many lens manufacturers (including Canon) tend to use the "macro" its important to remember the difference between true macro photography and simple "close-up" photography. A picture of a flower up close doesn't make it a macro shot.

The true definition of macro photography, also known as "photomacrography" is production of an image that is the same size (or larger) on the film plane as in real life (lifesize)

if you photograph an insect that is 2 centimeters long at 1:1 (lifesize), it's image will be 2 centimeters long at the film plane or digital sensor.

shot of a spider at 1:1 life size

Hey M0nkey, I was into photography years ago, took it in college. Now I'm interested in getting into the digital age and have a cheaper camera. What camera would you suggest for good macro shots as well as regular shots. Thanks.... great shots by the way.

B/R

Im another one who wants a better camera then the cheap Wal-Mart digital one i got a couple of years ago.

canon are pretty damn good in the right hands




getting the right hands though is pretty damn hard too , imust be wearing gloves lol

i woudl sergest the canon 400D..great price and bad ass camara..then get your self a 50mm 0r 100mm or 105mm macro lens and a flash and your have lots of fun.

Unbelievable shots.....mOnkey you are the next Joop!!!!

some of the best photos ever, and that Spider really scared me because you could see each individual eye......

it puts nature (both plant and animal) in a whole new, startling light....

kind regards from guineapig

Very cool, looking forward to learning more information and techniques that you can share. I am not a good photographer in anyway and would like to improve the pictures that i take, i know i have a macro setting on my camera but still have yet to figure it out..

Cant wait to learn more and thanks for sharing your talent with us

M0nkey said:

i woudl sergest the canon 400D..great price and bad ass camara..then get your self a 50mm 0r 100mm or 105mm macro lens and a flash and your have lots of fun.

Click to expand...

Forget about the 50/60 mm range, the working distance is really too close
(I made the error and bought a 50 mm f2.8 macro lens for my D80 )
the 90/105 range will be much more convinient, same lifesize features but with greater working distance… Tamron makes an excellent 90 mm not that expensive… and you also have the Kenko tubes option if you're short on cash…

wow monkey you're really taking good pics

Che Bleu said:

Forget about the 50/60 mm range, the working distance is really too close
(I made the error and bought a 50 mm f2.8 macro lens for my D80 )
the 90/105 range will be much more convinient, same lifesize features but with greater working distance… Tamron makes an excellent 90 mm not that expensive… and you also have the Kenko tubes option if you're short on cash…

Click to expand...

i wouldn't sign this...i'm working with a sigma 50mm (x1.6 - eos350d) f2.8 macro lens (1:1), for macros from plants and objects that don't move and i'm quite happy with it imho a shorter lens has the advantage that you can work more easily with artificial light (e.g. macro ring flash/ ring light)

only for insects it doesn't work that well because you have to get too close to get them...


if i had the money i would love to try the canon mpe 65mm


greetz to all macrofreaks

Hi monkey

Nice thread :smile: i love taking macros...

here are some of mine: (hope they're welcome, if not shoot me a pm)














this one is one of my favorites, i'm quite proud of it




greetings

same deal as sideshow bob, if ya want it removed, say so and its gone,
But with my cam this is as close as I can get. I'm looking at lens options as we speak. Would you suggest the closeup lenses that are advertised as +1+2+4 and can be used together or an all in one 10x macro (supposedly) lens.

sluurrrppp
what's good in macro is that you believe then you can swin in your pot... dreamy pothead

Lets talk lenes

Lets talk lenes

LET'S TALK LENSES!

The easiest and most efficient way to get true macro photos is to use a true macro lens. Most manufacturers make 1:1 macro lenses in several focal lengths ranging from 50mm to 200mm, and they are always fixed focal lengths. These are low-maintenance lenses that you put on the camera and operate just like any other lens.

Macro lenses typically have very short minimum focus distance ratings; minimum focus distance is the “closest” distance you can be to the subject before the lens loses its ability to focus. Short focal length macro lenses have lower minimum focus distance than longer focal length macro lenses. What this means to the macro photographer is “working distance”; working distance is the measure of length between the end of your lens and your subject when at a 1:1 magnification ratio. A longer lens will give you more working distance while maintaining 1:1 true lifesize magnification.
For example, Sigma makes three very good macro lenses in the three focal lengths 50mm, 105mm, and 180mm.i have both the 50mm and 105mm..The working distances are for these lens is


Working Distance : 50mm - 1.6 inches
Working Distance 105mm - 4.7 inches
Working Distance 180mm - 9.1 inches

This means that if you use the 50mm lens, you will have to be about 1½ inches away to get a lifesize shot, and if you use the 105mm lens, you’ll have to be just under 5 inches away. But if you use the 180mm lens, you can be up to 9 inches away from the subject and still get a full 1:1 lifesize macro shot. Obviously, this is important with either dangerous or highly skittish insects like butterflies…more working distance allows you to get 1:1 without getting too close.Like u saying goes u cant have it all and the feather your away from the subject the less the flash will work.

One effective way to squeeze even more working distance out of some lenses is to use teleconverters (TCs), which go between the lens and the body (like extension tubes do); TCs contain glass elements that effectively change the focal length of the lens. Continuing with my example above, if you put a 2x TC onto the Sigma 180mm macro lens, you will effectively double the focal length of that lens to 360mm and it will still maintain its true macro 1:1 magnification. But the real benefit of doing this is that it will also double the working distance of that lens to over 18 inches.
As an added bonus, you could even gain some extra magnification this way because if you use this combination at the “normal” working distance of 9 inches, you are actually shooting at 2x lifesize (2:1)! I should mention here that there is a price for just about everything, and the price of using TCs is loss of light reaching the film plane by the number of stops equal to the magnifying property of the TC.sorry if im confusing u but it will all fall in to place as the thread goes on. For example, a 2x TC cuts out two full stops of light, and thus will “slow down” your lens by 2 stops. This really doesn’t matter in macro because you will be stopping down the fstops anyway in order to maximize depth-of-field.

There is one other highly-specialized macro lens available from Canon which is the outstanding MP-E lensm which i bought 5 weekas AGO. allows magnifications of up to 5x lifesize (5:1). These lenses are expensive, difficult to master, and hard to handle, but if you practice with them and become proficient in their use, you will reap the benefits of some utterly stunning extreme close-up shots.

CLICK TO ENLARGE
(spider at 5:1 life size)

lighting

lighting

so far we have learned what 1:1 life size means and what lenes can get u 1:1 life size...saying u allready bought an slr and u now have your macro lens..1 vital thing your lacking is light.

There are two good ways to tip the scale in your favor when shooting macro. The first is to make good use of external electronic flash. Although there are some drawbacks to using flash in macro, such as the possibility of glare, reflections, or a stark background, these risks are outweighed by the benefits of maximized depth-of-field because flash will let you stop down and increase shutter speed. When you control the light, you control the shot!

Electronic flashes have come a very long way, in terms of macro photography. Many camera manufacturers offer complete macro systems that make it easier than ever to control macro lighting. Of special note is Canon’s excellent MT-24EX flash which i now own,It mounts on the front of your macro lens and provides two separate flash heads that can be angled and rotated in a multitude of lighting combinations. Another way that macro photographers are using flash is to employ special brackets and diffusers that put a single flash on an adjustable arm so that the arm can be “bent” and thus point light directly at the subject. Still other photographers are using brackets that provide shoes for two separate flash units that can be positioned independently. Obviously, there are many ways to employ flash in macro photography, and doing so will improve your success rate dramatically.
Another way to get the upper hand is with increased megapixels (if you shoot digital). There is a huge difference between shooting 3 megapixels vs. 5 or 6 (or even 8) megapixels because when you capture more pixels you can crop (an “after the fact” zoom) many of them away and still end up with enough pixels for a good print. Note, though, that megapixels have nothing to do with magnification.

2 rigs the same..canon slr with mpe-65 lens..only different is the flash on eat system..mine has mt-24ex twin flash and my buddies has a single flash mounted on a custom bracket..both giving same shot just 2 different ways to do things..

DOF

DOF

The first rule of metering macro is to maximize depth of field(DOF) which means setting your aperture as far down (a high f-stop number) as you can reasonably get it. Most lenses will stop down to f/22, and many macro lenses will stop down to f/32. There is some debate about losing sharpness at those extreme apertures, but suffice it to say that you are much better off at the high-number end of the aperture range, anywhere from f/16 to f/32.
If controlling aperture is so important, it means that you will have to set your camera to either aperture-priority or full manual control. What you want to avoid is setting your camera to “Auto”, “Program” or “Macro”. The latter exposure control setting is usually designated by a tulip symbol, and it just tells the camera to err on the side of a small aperture; it has nothing to do with “converting” your camera or lens to shoot macro, and many camera owners are being fooled by this setting every day.





Be careful when using your camera on aperture-priority mode because the camera will pick a corresponding shutter speed that balances the small aperture (high f/stop) to properly expose, and this often results in shutter speeds too slow to hand-hold (because a small aperture lets in less light). A tripod can eliminate this problem as long as the subject is stationary. Even if you use a flash, though, most aperture-priority systems will still set a balanced shutter speed and use the flash only for fill light, not as the main light for the shot. For these reasons, I do all of my macro shooting in full manual mode and with a powerful flash with 90% of my shots at shutter speed 200 fstop 8-16 iso 100.

Assuming that your camera system has a capable flash exposure metering technology, such as Canon’s E-TTL and Nikon’s D-TTL, the combination of manual exposure settings and a powerful flash system rigged for macro gives you as much control as you will need for most shooting environments. Since you control the light (with your TTL flash or flashes), you can set your camera to whatever aperture and shutter speed you desire, and then just let the flash do its job. like i said before Most of my shots are at an aperture of f/16 and a shutter speed of 1/200; this way, I get the value of a smaller aperture (maximizing DOF) and the flexibility of a relatively fast shutter speed that makes handling much easier.

omg... macro slater pr0n! sexy!

Hi Monkey, trying to follow along, but I have a question now. You said tht you like the 100 ISO, just wondering what advantage that has over say a 400 ISO(my biggest setting) which I find lets in more light than the 100 or 64(which is the smallest I can get). So far the only diff I find with ISO settings is the smaller the number the slower the shutter speed I have to use and the picture comes out bluer than with higher settings.

GMT said:

Hi Monkey, trying to follow along, but I have a question now. You said tht you like the 100 ISO, just wondering what advantage that has over say a 400 ISO(my biggest setting) which I find lets in more light than the 100 or 64(which is the smallest I can get). So far the only diff I find with ISO settings is the smaller the number the slower the shutter speed I have to use and the picture comes out bluer than with higher settings.

Click to expand...

hey buddie..thansk for stoping by..

ISO is the measurement of how sensitive a digital camera's sensor is to light. The speed or light-sensitivity of a digital camera's sensor is rated in ISO numbers -- the lower the number, the slower the response to light.

Higher ISO numbers indicate a higher sensitivity to light, so less time is needed to expose a picture. Most digital cameras let you control the ISO setting to allow the use of higher shutter speeds and/or smaller apertures, according to circumstances.

BEWARE!
you will generally find that the higher the ISO setting the noisier your image will be –- depending on how much noise there is, it might look like your photo is covered in a layer of sand (that would mean a lot of noise).

when shooting macro u want the crispest sharpest shot which is the lowest iso it goes to..but 100-400 u dont really see a chance in noise..its that little u wont recognize it.,shooting in macro i only go in 100-200 iso.