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Budget Macro Photography


Macro photography is an absolute blast, but dedicated macro lenses can be prohibitively expensive. Here's a brief overview on some ways to get started without breaking the bank!


What is macro photography?

Macro photography is closeup photography. Close enough that the image you’re taking has a 1:1 reproduction rate, meaning that the subject framed in the photo is at least scaled 1:1 compared to the size of your sensor or frame of film. To accomplish this you will need some special equipment, as you’ve likely realized that you’re going to be pretty limited in close focus distance with normal lenses.

Diffusers

Flashes are incredibly vital for macro photography. You can do macro work without a diffuser, but the inclusion of a flash into your setup will make things infinitely easier. When you’re doing true macro (1:1 reproduction ratio) or super macro (beyond 1:1), extra light can become a downright necessity for keeping shutter speeds high enough for handheld work.

Diffusion is also fairly important for creating pleasing lighting for macro images. A lot of the subjects in macro photography are going to have tons of shiny bits to bounce back highlights from a harsh, undiffused flash. A diffuser like the one pictured that extends over the macro lens setup and directs the light down and around the subject works fantastically. There are dedicated macro flash setups and lighting rigs, but this article is more aimed at budget solutions, and what’s more budget than some paper you can stick to your flash to make it more suitable for macro work?

Other light modifiers can be handy as well, like white and black foam core to bounce/absorb light or cast shadows and create shade.

Diopters

Diopters are another option to increase the magnification of lenses you already have around. They’re inexpensive and easy to use, but I personally don’t care for them. The amount of optical flaws they add to an image outweigh their potential benefit for macro photography. It's very similar to the kind of distortion and flaws you will see in fisheye or telephoto adapters that pop onto the end of an existing lens. Not ideal, and for the money there are far better options, like macro extension tubes.

Macro Tubes

Macro tubes are in my opinion one of the two best combinations of inexpensive and high quality options for macro photography. Extension tubes generally come in two varieties: Dumb tubes without any electrical contacts for autofocus, aperture control, and sending lens information to the camera body and Smart tubes, that do have contacts for the lens that allow all the standard lens controls. If you’re adapting vintage manual focus lenses from the film era, dumb tubes are all you need. If you’re adapting modern digital camera lenses you’re probably going to want to get a set of extension tubes with electrical contacts so you have, at the very least, control over your aperture. Shooting macro wide open is a recipe for disappointment.

There’s a few things to watch out for with macro lenses. First, the longer the total length of extensions you’re adding between the camera body and the lens, the more light is lost. Flashes and diffusers are going to help out greatly to get the shutter speed up to a sufficiently fast rate for capturing moving critters like insects or flowers on a breezy day. Second, the length of the extension of the lens will have varying magnification effects on different focal length lenses. The shorter the focal length of your lens it will take less of an extension to get a bigger “zoom” boost for macro photography. A 20mm extension will have a much larger impact on a 28mm lens than it will on a 200mm lens.

Reversed Lens

Reversed lenses are the second of the two best options for low cost, high performance macro photography. You just take a lens you already own (preferrably a manual focus lens, but you can rig up a moder electronically controlled lens as well with a little extra fiddling), buy an inexpensive adapter--generally under $10-- and screw it to the filter ring of your lens allowing it to be mounted rear element forward.

Just like with macro tubes, this solution gives you only a certain amount of working distance, and it's usually pretty close to your subject. How close depends on the focal length of the reversed lens.

Doubled Lenses

Another option is mounting a second lens, in reverse, to the front of your primary lens. The focal length combinations will alter things like macro reproduction ratio and working distance. This is a really fun solution, but is a bit unwieldy for a few reasons:

If you can work around those cons, or have a bunch of lenses sitting around gathering dust and want to give the idea of doubled lenses a try, I say go for it. If you’re a beginner just getting started with macro photography, you’re much better off to start either with extension tubes or reversed single lenses.

Weather

Weather can play a key role in macro photography. While sunny weather and golden light are amazing for most types of photography, it can be detrimental to macro photography. Getting this close up to the subject can make managing highlights a herculean task, and the spikey light just isn’t conducive to good macro images.

Leave the Tripod at Home

A lot of beginner guides suggest using tripods. Intuitively it makes sense, given that there’s a steep learning curve with hand holding while shooting at 1:1 reproduction rate and higher. A tripod, however, will just hold you back. If you’re out shooting and trying to capture moving insects or small critters, you have to be able to move around. Tripods are going to prevent you from getting the kind of bug shots you’re after and you’re going to walk home disappointed. There’s a time and place for tripods, but when starting out with macro photography, hand held shooting is a much better way to get started. You’ll learn more about how photography works at the scales we’re talking about in this article and be unencumbered in your effort to get great macro shots.

Mind your F’s

The aperture size is incredibly important in macro photography. In contrast to other detail photography or portraiture, you almost always need to have the aperture stopped down significantly when doing macro photography. Depth of field, the characteristic of a lens that describes how much distance is in focus is heavily impacted by the distance of the subject from the camera. Since most macro work is done very, very close to the subject, the depth of field is incredibly thin compared to more general photography. Closing down to f8 or f11 or smaller is common, since diffraction is easier to deal with in post for macro photography than having a subject that’s 90% out of focus. Image stacking and focus bracketing are incredibly useful techniques in post to create entire-subject focus in macro photography, but those are subjects for another article. To cut it short: focus bracketing is when you take multiple images with different areas of the subject in focus, then using photo editing tools to stack together and combine all the in focus parts into one sharp, in focus image.

The need to stop down your lens is a big reason why you’re really going to want to spring for the extra cost of extension tubes with electrical contacts to retain aperture control of the lens. If you’re going to shoot with a vintage lens (with manual aperture control) or a dedicated macro lens, this point is moot.

Conclusion

So there you have it. A very brief overview on some elements of macro photography that can be done on a relative budget. I fully intend to elaborate this article out and do some further writing in more depth on the nittier grittier things involved with macro photography. Stay tuned!

Written on Tuesday, 29 December 2020, by Aaron Brown. Last edited on


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