Announcer: Adorama TV presents Digital Photography One on One, where we answer your questions.
Here's your host, Mark Wallace.
Mark Wallace: Hey, everybody. Welcome to this week's episode of Digital Photography One
on One. I'm Mark Wallace.
Well, this week we have a question from Jim Ferriby from Port Huron, Michigan. Jim asks,
"I'm a beginner photographer, and I'm interested in macro photography. What do I need to get
started?"
Well, Jim, that's a great question. In fact, a lot of people have been asking about macro
photography, and so in this episode, we're going to talk about the basics of macro photography,
just the things you need to get started.
And for those of you who don't know what macro photography is, it's when you take shots of
something that's really small and you magnify it. So, it could be something like a bunch
of thumbtacks. It could be a single thumbtack stuck into the wall, or, a lot of people like
to shoot bugs like this one. I shot this one earlier this week. This is a little bee that
was camping out in front of our offices.
Well, to do all this kind of stuff, you need four things. You don't need all four, but
all four will help you really get the best results. So, the one thing you need absolutely,
for sure is a lens. And you need something that's called a macro lens.
Now, there are all different types of macro lenses, so the one I'm showing you today is
just one of many that you have at your disposal. And later on, in the future, what we're going
to be doing is we're going to be going through all the different components on Adorama TV's
product reviews to show you some differences between some of these things I'm showing.
But today, we're just giving you an overview of some of the basics.
Well, the lens - the one I have right here - this is a 100-millimeter macro lens. It's
a pretty nice lens, but it has some features that I want to go over. And these are made
for all different brands of camera.
Well, on this guy, we have a few things. There's a switch on the side here, and what that does
is it allows you to tell the lens's auto-focus what to look for and how large the range is
when it's focusing.
So, for example, it's got the full range, and it means: try to focus from the very first
to the very last thing it sees, or you can start restricting that and saying, you know,
only half a meter to infinity, or a third to a half meter. What that's saying is, "I
just want you to focus on this flower, and forget everything in front and behind." And
that can really significantly increase your auto-focus speed.
So, that's what most macro lenses will have, a range selector like that, and it's really
important.
Now, sometimes when you're shooting macro photography, the auto-focus is just really,
really - it's too slow, or the movement in your hand is going to throw off your focus.
So, most macro lenses have a really nice, large focus ring that allows you to manually
focus when you need to. And there's a lot of times you're going to need to manually
focus, so that's a really nice feature as well.
Well, the other thing that we have on this guy right here is the auto-focus and manual
focus switch. And on macro photography you'll be flipping that back and forth a lot because
on macro photography you really need to focus manually on some specific things, and we'll
get into that when we do our demo.
And then last, on this lens, there is an image stabilization switch that turns image stabilization
on and off. And if you're shooting handheld, you really need that for macro photography.
Now, macro photography is really, really getting in close to your subject, and so any movement
is really going to be magnified when you're shooting a macro shot.
And so, image stabilization will help, but, really, unless you have a really fast shutter
speed, you need to augment the stabilization of your lens. And for that, what you need
is a nice tripod.
Now, the tripods for macro photography are just the same as tripods for any other type
of photography, except for maybe one exception. And that is, with macro shots, you're going
to be getting into all different positions. You're going to be getting really high and
really low to the ground. You're going to need to be able to shift your camera around
in all different angles, so you want to get one that has some flexibility of movement.
This tripod we're showing you here is a Gitzo, and it has all kinds of different knobs to
help you really position your camera. And we're going to take this outside and show
you just how this works. But, there are a lot of different brands of tripods that will
allow you to do the same thing. The point is, you want one that really allows you a
lot of flexibility in positioning, and something that's really going to lock your camera down
once you do have it in position.
Now, the third thing that I highly recommend is this little guy right here. This is called
a cable release, and what this is used for is - again, it's all about stabilization.
So, you have an image-stabilized lens, you have a nice tripod, but the thing is, when
you take a picture, you can actually shake your camera just by pushing the shutter release
button.
If you're taking a picture of a really small ant or a bee or a flower, that movement can
throw everything out of focus, or it can induce some blur in your photos. So, you want to
disconnect your hand from the camera, and you can do that with a cable release. And
when you push this, your camera takes a picture. So, that's what that's all about.
And these guys are about 35, 40 bucks to start out with, and then you can get some really
fancy ones that do all kinds of other functions like timing, and delayed response, and long
exposures, et cetera, that are a little bit more expensive. But, to start out with, they're
very, very inexpensive.
Now, the last thing that you'll need, if you really want to take this to the end of the
game, is a nice flash. Now, these flashes are not normal flashes; these are macro flashes.
And so, this one here looks like a ring flash. It totally surrounds the lens, and most macro
flashes actually mount to the end of the lens.
And there are different types of macro flashes. This one is a little ring that goes around
the lens. Sometimes you have these two little guys that pop out to the side that you can
adjust. The point is you need a flash that's dedicated to a macro flash. And so that's
what this will do. The difference is these guys are going to be really, really close
to the subject, whereas a normal flash is going to be up toward the back, a little bit
farther away, and much too powerful.
So, those are the four components. Once again, it's the lens, it's the tripod, it's the cable
release, and a flash. Now that we know all about the gear, let's go outside and take
a few macro shots, and I'll show you how to put all this together to get some really,
really nice-looking images.
We're outside here in just a bunch of bushes. That's the great thing about macro photography;
you don't need something that's extravagant; you're looking for the small details in life.
So, what I'm going to do is... I'm going to first take a picture of this little tiny flower.
As you can see it's about the size of my fingertip. I'm just using my macro lens and that's all.
So, when I do this the nice thing is I'm going to use manual focus because auto focus is
focusing just great, but there's a little bit of wind out here, and when this moves
just slightly, it's throwing everything out of focus. So, I can sort of track that using
my manual focus. So, let me get a shot of that really quickly, and here we go. OK.
And I'm shooting right now at an aperture value of 14. The reason for that is if I shoot
any wider, the shallow depth of field is so shallow that at anything less than 14, if
I go all the way down to 2.8, it's just too shallow for me, and it's really difficult
to keep things in focus.
That causes some issues because even out here with bright sunlight - this is in bright sunlight
out here - I'm still shooting at a shutter speed of about a twentieth of a second, which
is a little bit too slow, so to get this shot, I really need to increase my ISO, or I need
to add some light.
So, we're going to add a flash here next because right below me down here, we have a nice ant-hill.
I really want to get some shots of these ants moving around, but this is in the shade. And
for me to get this, I really need to add some illumination. So, I'm going to add my flash,
and then we'll shoot some of these ants down here.
So, now I've added my flash and what that does is it allows me to do a couple of things
I can't do without one. Now I'm shooting in manual mode, and I've set my shutter speed
to 200th of a second, and my aperture value at F16. That's really nice because that fast
shutter speed is really going to help me from wiggling around too much and getting some
blur, and F16 is going to keep my depth of field nice and deep so that I don't have everything
falling out of focus.
Now the flash, because I'm in manual mode, is going to compensate for the lack of light
that we have from the sun, and throw in some light to give me some nice light on this ant-hill
down here. Now, I'm taking a couple of pictures of these ants, and we'll show you what they
look like. So come here, Mr. Ant. There he is; ah that guy's weird.
[pause]
Mark: All right, well those ants were a lot of fun to shoot, but they weren't really cooperating
with me, and so to get some better shots, I've added my last two elements, my cable
release and my tripod.
What I want to do is instead of trying to handle my camera and focus and wait for those
ants to come out, I'm actually going to rig my tripod so that the camera is really, really
close to where the king of the hill comes out, and then I can trigger it with my cable
release. So, let me do that really fast.
I'm just going to lower this down. Once I have it rigged, we'll show you how it works.
OK, now with this tripod, I can really get my camera down low, and this column here allows
me to extend it. Then I've got a ball head so once I get it in position, I can lock that
down. And this is so darn close to this ant-hill. Without a flash I'm not going to have enough
light to illuminate that because my camera's actually casting a shadow, so that's why you
want this really, really close to your subject.
I can use my cable release to get the perfect shot. So I'm just waiting for those ants to
pop out, and once they do, I'll have that shot. So, I'm going to camp out here for a
second; when I see the king of the hill come out, then I'll get the shot, and show you
what it looks like.
Once you have your system all set up, macro photography can be a lot of fun and highly
addictive because you can just go almost anywhere and find a great shot. We're in between a
couple of buildings - this is really an alleyway - I'm just looking around the ground for
different things. Looks like I have a little bolt down here, so I'm going to stick my tripod
down, line this up, and make sure I have a shot. It looks pretty darn good.
So once again, I'm shooting in manual mode, 200th of a second, F16 so I get a really nice,
sharp image where everything is in focus. I've got my lens, my flash, my tripod, and
my cable release. I'll take this shot. And there you have it. That's what you need to
get started with macro photography.
Well, that's it for this week's episode of "Digital Photography One on One." I hope you
enjoyed our little outing to get some bug shots.
Remember if you have questions about photography or photography-related gear, you can send
those to me at askmark@adorama.com. And as always, we have a lot more information at
the Adorama Learning Center all about macro photography and photography in general, so
please check it out. Well, thanks for joining us, and I'll see you again next week.
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