macro photography or micro photography as it's also becoming known as these days
is all about getting in close. Now if I'm gonna take a picture of this flower here
which to be honest I can't even focus on with my eyes because i'm turning into such an old git
I'm gonna need to get very close indeed. Enter the macro lens.
Look how close you can just get into things, look at that.
That's absolutely gorgeous. A bees eye view of a daisy.
I've just seen that shot of me in the back of the video camera, i've come to the
conclusion i'm gonna need botox or something.
Now, macro lenses.
Their main characteristic is that they can
focus in close and get all the wrinkles and things. Some of you may
have a zoom lens which has a macro facility,
now this one on the end here we've got a little orange bit with an M
that is it's macro range, now it's not really a macro lens
that just means that it can focus fairly close if you wanna get right into
macro
you do need something a bit more than this. Let's just dump that
on the lawn down there.
A macro lens will let you do that this will focus down
to an astonishingly tiny, oh crumbs
where is it? there it is, feet, feet, feet there's about
five-inches' six inches that's how close I can get and still focus with this lens,
you couldn't do that with a normal lens could you.
now when you're getting close to something, your depth of
field starts to shrink, that's a characteristic of all lense. The closer you
are
to the place you're focusing, the shallower your depth of field becomes.
So that gives you something to watch out for. Human beings we move don't we.
Little tiny movements can move the point of focus backwards and forwards
with this,
so it can be tricky to focus on something if you're doing macro
hand-held back there i was using my elbows as a little tripod to keep the camera steady.
Let's look at these poppies. There's a few little drops of water going on, on the top here.
so let's have a look and see how we get on.
Now as I get closer and closer and closer
and focus up the camera, that's a nce shot actually. I'll take it.
But as I get closer and closer it's actually quite hard for me to hold that
still because as I'm breathing and talking i'm moving up and down
just a tiny tiny little bit so everytime I focus and then I move
my shot goes out of focus. Tripod time.
I know I bang on about tripods an all the time, this is why because they're brilliant
they let you take pictures that you just wouldn't be able to take
unless you had one. So we're now inilliminating my movement
to do the shot, let's just see what we can do. move that around there
that's quite nice let's just see if we can get in a little bit closer.
Drop that down a bit. Here we go, now focus and
ah the autofocus missed it. There it goes,
that's really quite a nice shot isn't it.
Just then the breeze dropped
the flower wasn't moving, look at it now quickly, there's a little bit of a breeze going
on
and the flowers moving that is another enemy of the macro photographer. If you're
gonna do
flowers and plants they giggle and wobble around. So now my camera's nice and
still
but the flowers moving this is just something to bear in mind if you want to
go out and do some
nature photography on a breezy day it might not be your best time if you wanna
shoot flowers like these
but there is a way around it and i'm gonna come to that in a moment.
Another thing to look for with macro is light,
right now we've got an overcast sky,
if you're photographying something fairly delicate, soft delicate light such as you
get from
an overcast sky is the best way of going about it. The light is still directional
i'ss coming from over there although it's very very soft and very very subtle
and there's something I forgot to get out of my bag, So watch me run.
And that is a reflector,
now reflectors
are brilliant things, you don't need a very special reflector
because with macro
everything's on a macro scale isn't it? now it's really really small
this is my trusty gray card which you may have seen in other films
on the inside its white you can use this
as a reflector to kinda let's see if we can do it
Jayne see if you can get fairly close to this
now I don't know if you can see but as I bring that along side
here, can you see the light changing on the top of this little flower? it's a very subtle difference
can you see that going on? she's shaking her head at me,
Oh well best laid plans. We'll go and use this inside
because that's where I wanna go next you know I said if you got a breezy day and
you've got some plants and things they'll be wobbling around?
well you can either pick the top off, i'm not going too because it's not my flower
and take it indoors because there's a breeze. But because macro is a whole new
realm
almost anything you photograph can be exciting.