Hi. In this video we reveal more of the secrets of macro photography.
Hi, i'm Adam and welcome........to First Man Photography and before we get into the video if you haven't done so
already head over to www.firstmanphotography.com fill in your details to join the email
list and I'll send you a free copy of the ebook on how to capture perfect exposure....
everytime. Ok, let's get into this. Ok so this is the second part of my series on
macro photography. If you want to check out the first click up there now or click down below and you can see that
introduction to macro photography where we use some basic gear. In this one we use a more advanced setup to really get into it.
Ok so Macro Photography is all about getting close and magnifying the small and true macro photography is what we
call on a one-to-one magnification ratio and all that means is that the life-size
object you have will project the same size on to your sensor. So if you have like a one
penny piece that will project the same size onto your sensor so it really magnifies the image when
you blow it up. Now one of the key things to understand with macro photography is
about the depth of field because when you get in this close to your subject the depth of field
will be extremely, extremely small. So very often if you are down at say, f/2.8 on your aperture your depth of
field is gonna be absolutely tiny so a lot of the time we're gonna want to use a
slightly smaller aperture to increase the depth of field.
So if we take his shot of a lily is an example you can really see how that depth of field can be used to your advantage but
also how shallow it can be. Because i'm focused in on the stamen at the front there and as
you go down into the flower you lose that sharpness, although it looks good in this image.
You can also see how I have used the composition and you've got to think about your composition
as you would with any other shot and use all your normal photography rules.
Ok so because this the advanced part of the macro tutorial series we're gonna be
using some slightly more advanced gear, and that all starts with
macro lens. There is a number of them on market, this one though is the
Canon 100mm f/2.8L lens from Canon and if you want to see my review that please
click there, or down below to see that review now if that's something you're interested in.
I've also the macro extenders on here to get myself in even closer and we're gonna be using some
off-camera flash but also this dedicated macro flash, and I'm gonna be giving
this flash away so stick around until the end
to find out how you can win this. Ok, so with that all sorted let's get into shooting.
Ok, so we've got our studio set up and we're ready to shoot.
The beauty with macro is that you can do it to any time of year when the
weather's good, you can get out,
use that good bright conditions and it's easy to shoot and really experiment with
everything that nature has to offer.
now when we come inside it's important that we add light because of those small
apertures that we're often gonna be working with. Now in the previous video I use a very simple lamp set up
but because this is the advanced version were gonna be controlling that light
with flash. Now if you use on-board flash so your pop up flash or a camera mounted
Speedlite, the problem you're gonna run into is, if that flash is sat on top, or the light source is sat on top, if you're really close into
subject light is gonna literally be blocked by the lens of the camera so
using off-camera flash or a
macro flash is the way to go. The first way i'm gonna show you is with the off-camera flash
Ok so with macro there's lots of interesting things that we can shoot that aren't
immediately obvious to the human eye. And as an example
i'm gonna take a shot of this screw. I'm gonna do that, at first, without any flash at all
just to give you an example of what a difference controlling that light can make
So i'm gonna grab my camera and got the macro lens attached I'm gonna get down and
take a quick picture of this screw and i'm manual focusing a little bit
and take that shot. And as you can see, on that shot, I had high ISO, I had a very big aperture
or the biggest the lens would allow which is f/2.8 in this case and i've just gone ahead and shot it. And as you
can see it isn't very interesting image so I'm gonna control the light and add a little bit of
interest to the image. Now the first thing I'm gonna do is take this piece of
perspex and just put the screw on top of that because when we use the flash some
of the light will be reflected and i'll add a bit of a reflection to the image.
Ok so what i'm gonna do is use the flash to
light the screw and cast a nice shadow across the rest of the image of the
screw and I'm hoping that the background will be nice and dark with the aperture
that I'm using. So i'll grab the camera, i've got a very similar setup, the flash is switched on and i'm gonna get down and take the
shot again with the perspex and with the flash. So i'm lined up, take the shot and
as you can see that is a much more interesting and actually quite a nice image.
Now this setup is very similar to the setup I use for my macro water drop shots
if you haven't seen them before
are you're interested in shooting them for yourself please check out the tutorial now. I'll put
the link below or click on the screen now. Ok so I've got a nice shot there, let's change it up a little
bit and bring in the macro flash,
Ok so now we have our dedicated macro flash attached to the camera and it uses
this nice ring flash to light the scene and without..... with having the light source on the front
of the lens the lens isn't going block out any of that light. It actually makes
shooting macro very easy and the way i do it is to set my shutter speed to 1/200 second
My ISO to 100 or 200 and leave the flash on ETTL and then I adjust my
aperture depending on my depth of field needs for the image that I'm shooting. So it
really is easy and you can adjust the flash compensation if you need to adjust
your exposure at all. So once we've got all that set we can get to shooting some images
I've got my guitar here and I'm just gonna take a picture of that see what
interesting bits I can find. Now i'm going to have a little look at the machine heads down here and I'm
gonna get down and see what image i can get. So i'm gonna line it up, I want to use the strings as my lead-in line
so i'm just gonna take that shot and see what that looks like. As you can see that is
actually a pretty nice image. Another thing I really like about macro
photography is we can really have some light-hearted fun with it, especially since
photographers can so often be a stuffy bunch. So I've got a little setup here with my
friend Melvin the microchip and as you can see, he is very very so i've fed him a few sugar granules to keep him nicely fed.
So for this shot
I have got the macro lens and I've attached the macro extender, that i featured in the other video to get me
in a little bit closer to really blow Melvin up
as big as we possibly can on our final image. For this because i'm in so close I don't want any
movement so i've got it attached to the tripod
So i've already got my shot composed and i'm just gonna get down double check and then take that shot.
and as you can see, that's a fun shot so
when you come to shoot your own things you can really let your imagination run wild
you can use the off-camera flash, experiment with your light and you're really gonna get some
beautiful images.
Ok so I hope you enjoyed that video and you've now got a deeper understanding of
macro photography and you can really go and use that to capture some beautiful images of your own.
Ok, so if you want to be in with a chance
of winning this macro flash all you need to do, if you haven't done so already, is
subscribe to the channel and then I want you to leave a little note in the description
below about what you intend, or what you are planning, to shoot with your macro photography.
So if you liked the video please give it a thumbs up, because that really helps me out. Like the Facebook page if
you haven't done so already and I'll see you on the next video.
I'm Adam.....This is First Man Photography........Out!!!