Macro Photography Hints and Tips

Gear

A Camera.
Pretty much an essential item. Many digital compacts have a macro feature. Similarly many SLR standard zoom lenses also have a macro facility. So, using this is fine. In fact, I recommend giving it a go without buying any extra equipment if you can.

However, if you feel that you can’t get quite close enough with your current set-up, there are a number of options open to you.

Reversing rings; which allow you to mount a lens the wrong way around, so it will focus that much closer.

Extension tubes; tubes which extend the distance between the lens and the film or camera sensor. This is actually a pretty good option, and if you’re interested in doing it on the cheap, then check out this link on photocritic.org.

Supplementary close-up lens; a lens which fits on the front of your existing lens in much the same way as a filter would. One thing to remember with these is that the image quality will suffer a bit, since you’ve now got an extra bit of glass between the film/camera sensor and generally the optical quality of these lenses is not particularly high.

If you’re really serious about your macro photography, it might be worth considering the various specific macro lenses that are available, unfortunately these can be rather pricey.

A light source of some kind.
It’s always handy to carry a small pen torch if you’re out about and on the hunt for some good macro pictures. The ones where you can focus the beam of light by twisting the torch head are good. If you’re indoors you could probably organise a desk-lamp. You might find that sunlight is illuminating your chosen subject just fine, and if that’s the case go with it.

A Tripod.
A tripod is always handy. Though unless it’s very heavy, you’ll probably have to use some kind of timing feature on the camera, a shutter release cable, or remote shooting if available.
If you don’t have one, make sure you’re throwing plenty of light on the subject, so you can use reasonably fast shutter speeds and avoid camera shake.
Another tip is to hold the camera in such a way that it’s stable in your hands, hold elbows into chest or lean against the ground or a good solid object. It’s best if you can place the camera on something solid. It’s a good habit to get into with most photography anyway, but especially so with macro shots since you’re magnifying a subject, any shake is similarly amplified resulting in a blurred image.

Some card to use as reflector.
A small A5 piece of card is good. It’s worth considering some tinfoil also. (Tinfoil can throw quite harsh light, which can give some interesting effects)

Coloured tissue and some elastic bands.
These are useful to stick over the head of the torch, since they can be used to diffuse the light coming from it. Different colours can be good depending on the subject.

Choose your subject

The joy of macro photography is that you begin to consider the small rarely noticed aspects of objects in the environment around you. Once you take a few macro shots and get some decent results, it’s a area of photography that you always return to.

So, what sort of subjects can you shoot?

Flowers and plants; nothing wrong with a few pictures of flowers. Plenty of colour, and interesting shapes.

Insects; the simultaneously amusing and annoying thing about many species of insect is that they don’t tend to stay still for very long. They do, however, make for very interesting subjects.

Anything (obvious limitations and interestingness considered); the world just looks different when you see it up close.