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Macro Photography is a fascinating aspect of close up photography that many beginning photographers are eager to try. We’ll also give some helpful macro photography tips and hints that any level of photographer can use in this macro photography tutorial.
What Is Macro Photography?
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The word Macro means big, which seems counterintuitive to the thought of taking pictures of small things. But when we get ultra-close to a small subject in order to photograph it, the resulting image makes that subject look huge, so “macro” works. (To confuse matters, some lens makers call their macro lenses Micro, but we’ll just stick with Macro.)
But that’s basically what macro is, ultra-close focusing, often of small subjects or of aspects of a larger object that isn’t normally viewed up close. Macro photography for beginners can be a little intimidating at the start so we’ll go through a few beginner macro photography tips that will demystify the genre and help you capture some neat images.
There are some basic ideas you’ll need to know such as magnification ratios, depth of field concerns, what makes a good working distance, and lighting macro photography tips, so let’s get started on our macro photography tutorial and build on that.
Macro Photography Magnification Ratios
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When looking at lens choices for macro photography, you’ll often see references to “life size” or perhaps a ratio such as 1:4, 1:2, or 1:1. What does all that mean?
The ratios or or terms such as ¼ life size refer to the size of the subject and what size it appears on the image sensor or the film frame. Saying a lens focuses close enough to have ¼ life size marco means that the subject size recorded on the sensor format is ¼ of what it is in real life. This ¼ life size can also be written as the magnification ratio 1:4 (1 to 4).
That doesn’t seem like much but we don’t view our images at the size of the image sensor, we view an enlargement of it. Even a smartphone screen is quite a bit larger than a full frame image sensor. So then the tiny ¼ lifesize on the image sensor becomes significantly bigger than life size when viewed on the screens of any device or as a physical print.
Zoom lenses will often have a close focusing capability which delivers a pretty good macro ratio. There are also specialty lenses designed and corrected for this ultra-close focusing and these are what you see labeled as a Macro (or Micro) lens. These special lenses are usually a single prime focal length and will focus close enough to render a magnification ratio of 1:1 or life size.
So while a zoom lens may be labeled as a macro zoom because it focuses close enough to give a ¼ life size image, it is actually not as entirely capable for macro work as a prime macro lens. Don’t let that stop you, though, a close focusing zoom lens will work for a large variety of close up imaging.
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Depth of Field
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You have learned that besides exposure, lens aperture also controls how much of an image is in or out focus, also called depth of field. But the lens aperture is not the only thing affecting depth of field, focusing distance is also part of that calculation.
As an important part of our macro photography tips, the closer you focus, the tighter or shallower the depth of field. As you get into the macro photography magnification ratios, the depth of field gets extremely shallow.
This won’t be an issue with flat or one dimensional subject matter, but when trying out macro photography on 3D subjects, such as a flower or an insect, the tight depth of field can result in an image missing important detail.
The problem in macro photography for beginners is that in order to get good enough depth of field for a 3D subject, you need a small aperture. A small aperture will require a longer shutter speed to get correct exposure.
Those longer shutter speeds will require us to compensate somehow in order to counter camera shake. The closer we focus, camera and subject motion is greatly magnified. A monopod or tripod is another of the more important macro photography tips for capturing sharp macro photography images.
Macro Lenses and Working DIstance
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In order to get these ultra-high magnifications with macro lenses, we are actually going to be physically very close to the subject. If we are using a zoom lens, we’re probably going to be shooting at the telephoto end of its zoom range. Which is good for a lot of macro photography subjects since we might not be able to capture the image we want if we’re too close.
When choosing one those specialty macro lenses mentioned earlier, our choices are generally in the 50mm range of the 90mm to 105mm range. The primary advantage of using a longer focal length is to give us a greater working distance between the front of the lens and the subject.
The longer length macro lenses are generally bigger, heavier, and more expensive so you might want to rent one before committing to a major lens purchase.
Lighting for Macro Photography
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Good lighting is very important in macro photography. With strong enough light, we can use smaller apertures for more depth of field while maintaining shutter speeds fast enough to eliminate blur due to the subject or camera motion.
The problem is that we may be so close to the subject that we’re blocking the good light. And the flash in our camera won’t help either when we’re that close because the light will go over the subject instead of illuminating it.
A great solution is a ring light. We have battery and AC powered LED ring lights that we can carry into the field or use in our home studio, some of them attach directly to the lens. As an added bonus, ring lights provide shadow less lighting which is often perfect for capturing fine details in macro photography subjects.
Try It Out Yourself
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Macro photography for beginners doesn’t have to be complicated. You can probably begin with the equipment you have now. After trying out some of these macro photography tutorial tips, you’ll be able to decide which direction you want to go in regards to equipment and what type of macro photography you want to do.
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