Thank you for all who came to our macro photography meeting and we hope you had some fun playing around with our product photography light boxes, extension tubes, and the handful of subjects including the Lego Minifigures, fake succulents, coffee beans, colorful rocks, tennis balls, etc. If you missed the meeting or want to review what we, here is the recap.
To start off (Nathaniel writing here), macro photography is taking close up photos of small things such that subject appears life size. In order to achieve this, you need to be able to focus on your subject that is really close to your lens. All lenses have a minimum focus distance which tells you what is the closest distance that you can focus on an object from distance to the camera sensor (known as the flange distance). Typically lenses that you would use for other types of photography (landscapes, portraits, etc.) cannot focus close enough to make a small subject appear larger than life.
Macro photography. 85mm portrait lens with extension tubes. Photo by Nathaniel Young.
So aside from a camera, there are a few things that can help you focus closer to achieve a nice macro photo. You could use a dedicated macro lens. These are indeed really nice, but they can cost a lot of money. If you just want to try out macro photography, then this is probably not the best idea. Instead, you can buy some extension tubes that you can place between your camera sensor and lens. This will allow your lens to have a closer minimum focus distance. The more extension tubes you use, the closer you will be able to focus. Also, you can take off your lens and hold it in reverse which will flip all of the internal lens elements allowing you to also focus closer than normal. This will not work on a Nikon DSLR camera, but I do know it works on a Sony mirrorless or Canon DSLR cameras. In order for this to work, you need to set your aperture before taking your lens off. You can also buy a cheap adapter to mount your lens backwards. With all of this said, I think the easiest way is to just get some extension tubes for your specific camera. In the above photo I (Nathaniel Young) took, I used an 85mm lens (a typical portrait lens) with some extension tubes to allow my lens to focus on the plant.
Macro photography. 28mm macro lens. Photo by Nathaniel Young.
One of the hardest things to do in macro photography is get your subject in focus. While you can use auto focus if your subject you are photographing is large enough, I recommend to just use manual focus. Start by turning your lens to its closest focus distance and then moving your whole camera forward and backward until you get your subject into focus. I find it easier to use live view on your camera to get focus. And if your camera has focus peaking, I recommend turning it on as it can help you get your focus right. In both of the photos above, I shot the photos handheld while rocking back and forth until I got my subject in focus.
If you can, it is always recommended to use a tripod and get your focus perfect. But if you are shooting handheld, then rocking back and forth is a good alternative to getting your focus right. As for the aperture, generally I like to start with it wide open to get that nice shallow depth of field; however, many times you will find yourself wanting more things in focus. Stopping down your aperture can bring more of your subject into focus. If that is not enough, then you can focus stack your photo. Basically, this means that you can take multiple photos at different focus distances and then combine the photos together in post-processing. In Photoshop, you can use the Photomerge feature to do this. That will output all your photos as layers inside the Photoshop document with layers masks on each photo. You can further adjust these layer masks to make sure your subject is in focus.
Here are a couple photos from the meeting taken by Nathaniel Young. Didn’t get any photos of anyone using the product photography light boxes though.
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