Hi everybody! My name is Steve Giralt.
I'm here at The Garage, our production company in Brooklyn New York,
and today I'm going to show you 5 tips on how to shoot better macro videos.
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So, tip number one is about getting close,
and I mean really, really close.
You know, we're doing macro videos here.
Some people are like, "Oh, yeah. That's kind of macro"
I'm talking about, like, if I could get this thing into the lens,
let's do it, and let's go for it.
So, I'm going to show you a little bit about getting really, really, super close
with your camera to your lens and your object.
So, as you see here, this is a Laowa 24mm probe lens--
I actually bought it at B&H--
and it allows you to shoot up to two to one macro .
What does that mean?
It means that you could actually capture something twice the size it is
in reality on the film plane.
So--or, well, digital plane, for this case.
So, with this lens you can see I have this whisk here,
right here,
and it is actually holding focus
with it literally touching the lens.
So, it's pretty amazing what you could do,
and the fun with this is you could also just pull focus here,
and you'll see that I could focus at the back,
which is really cool.
I could focus towards the front,
which is really cool.
You're going to want to be a little steadier than I am with my hand here,
but it lets you do really cool stuff
and really play with that depth without even moving the camera.
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For tip number two, when you're this close to things,
you got to make sure that your camera's on something really sturdy.
So, keep in mind if you're on a wood floor,
if people are starting walking around, you're going to see the shake in it.
It's really best to make sure you're on something super sturdy,
and don't walk around and move
while you're trying to do a macro.
On top of that, if you want to try to move your camera through a scene,
maybe on a slider or on a little pan tilt head or tripod
Make sure it's a really sturdy tripod and it's not going to move
in a really crazy way as you try to keep things really sturdy
because in macro, any little bit of shake and you'll see it
For us, [chuckles lightly] we're using this
monstrous robot right here.
This is a Milo Motion Control Robot.
It actually won an Oscar about 10, 20 years ago
for being such an innovative piece of machinery.
So, this lets you move the camera, even at this extreme macro,
in super smooth ways,
and you could actually do repeat moves that way, as well.
We won't get it too much, but it's pretty awesome.
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So, for tip number three, it's about light.
Make sure that, just because you're really close to something,
you're not forgetting to think about how to light that as beautifully as possible.
The next challenge is also not just making beautiful light,
but making sure you have enough light.
This lens, for example, is f/14, so it needs a ton of light
if you're going to try to shoot video with it.
Or, there's always the sun outside.
The sun outside is really powerful,
and you could do a lot of lighting with it,
and if anything just put a little bit of diffusion between the sun and your object,
and you can get a lot done.
But, for us, we use this SkyPanel S60.
It's a really great light,
and it lets you dim, and do all sorts of stuff, and change colors.
It's a really fun light,
and it's pretty powerful, as you can see,
because right here I'm shooting on this lens at f/14,
and it's exposing this scene just fine,
and it's not that far away.
So, light is the big thing to remember,
because, I think, a lot of people with macro just kind of aim it at it
and expose it and don't think about the fact you could shape light,
even if you're just shooting something this big [chuckles]
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So, tip number four is don't forget to clean up after yourself.
Clean your room!
[laughing] Um, so,
We have to use a lot of different things
to try to clean the objects that we're on
because, when you're that close to things,
you're gonna see everything.
So canned air [air sounds]
or one of these little squeezy things are really great.
We use a microfiber cloth like this a lot too
for wiping surfaces and shiny objects like glass.
If you get really close to glassware or diamonds or any of those things,
you're going to need to really polish those things up perfectly,
and it's a really fun challenge to try to make those look nice and clean,
and nice and sparkly and all those things.
So make sure you keep in mind:
keep your room clean.
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Last but not least tip number five is all about perspective and depth.
So, a lot of people think,
"Macro, okay. I'm going to get 100mm macro or 180mm macro
"I'm gonna be super far away from the object,
"and that's gonna be cool because I'll be really tight to it"
But, with that, a lot of depth is lost.
So, with this lens right here, the Laowa probe is a 24mm.
So, as you see here,
it shows a lot of depth in the shape
from being a wide angle lens
compared to this 50 macro, which I'm going to show you as well.
So, I switched to the 50mm macro,
and you see here, the depth of the imagery is really different.
Kind of a very different aesthetic altogether.
Obviously depth of field gets a lot softer
compared to this lens at f/14.
I'm still here at f/11,
so I'm not that far off,
but just the mechanics of the lens
and the way the 50mm gets softer
and is a longer lens really changes things.
So, it's really a matter of choosing the right lens
for the project you're trying to do.
There is no right lens or wrong lens.
It's called what the artist is intending to do.
So, I'll leave it to you to use your artistic intent
to decide which macro lenses you should play with.
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Thank you so much for joining us for our macro tips today.
I hope you enjoy them. I hope you go out and you explore them.
If you really enjoy this, make sure you like this, you subscribe, you comment,
you tell us how wonderful this is
because the folks at B&H are really working hard on all these for you.
If you want to follow us at The Garage,
you can follow me on Instagram at @SteveGiralt
or you can follow our educational program @thegaragelearning
or the garagelearning.com
I hope you guys join us next time for another fun series of tips
and stay safe!