Category Archives: Macro

Insect photography

Syrphid fly, Sunnyvale, CA, USA

Syrphid fly, Sunnyvale, CA, USA

 

There are a few options to make high magnification images of small things. Firstly, you may get yourself a dedicated macro lens. I would highly recommend the 200mm f4 macro lens. The 200mm focal length allows for sufficient working distance from the insects. A 100mm focal length option is much cheaper, but you have to get very close to the insects and they will fly away before you get your shot. The other option, if you already have the 70-200mm f2.8 lens is to add a Canon 500D diopter to it, to make it focus close. This is what I do. The third alternative is to add an extension tube (available from Kenko) to the 70-200mm f2.8 option and thereby reduce the minimum focusing distance to enable macro photography. Once you get the right lens, your next challenge is to hand-hold and shoot these insects. At macro focusing distances, you hardly have any depth of field. Shooting at f22 is a necessity to get the whole insect in sharp focus. This challenges the shutter speed. You deal with it by setting the shutter speed to 1/250 s manually and using an external speedlight to provide the lighting. This is how I photographed the Syrphid fly shown here.

Although it requires special skills, once mastered macro photography can be very joyful.

I will be covering the macro technique in detail in the “Advanced DSLR Seminar” coming up.

The joy of macro photography

Water drops inside plastic bottle

Water drops inside plastic bottle

It is liberating to see great images everywhere. Just observe the insides of your water bottle when it is partially filled with water. If this bottle is lying in your car for a while, you might see this. I saw it one day and decided to park the car on the side of the road for about 15 minutes and captured this image. Just before writing this post, I saw similar bubbles on the surface of the coffee I am drinking. Watch for a similar image brown in color (the coffee surface) soon … Hope you like this one …

I will be conducting an advanced seminar on DSLR covering wildlife, macro and night photography along with HDR techniques, Composites and Panoramic imaging on Saturday, March 2, 2013. You can register for it if you like.  This seminar will be in San Jose, CA.