Macro photography is highly rewarding, but it's not an easy genre. Now, I'm
sure that you could make that same argument for any type of photography - but
at the moment, I'm not. I'm only talking about macro. This is a type of
photography where you go out in hot, humid conditions specifically in search
of bugs. Or in search of flowers, or lizards, or whatever it is you photograph.
And, once you've found them, you need to focus so precisely that your one-millimeter
depth of field is perfectly on your subject's eye, or is at the
perfect spot on a flower petal. You might not even have the width of a hair for
your margin of error. And, on top of that, you're magnifying your subject so much
that you magnify camera shake as well. So, clearly, picking the right camera
settings is not easy. And I'll explain what all of these different
considerations are in a minute, but first let's start with some basic terminology.
There's really two terms that I think anyone should know for macro photography,
and those are working distance and magnification. We'll start with the easy
one, which is working distance. Right now, in my hand I've got a 105mm
macro lens, and I've turned its focus ring to the closest focus position. When
I do that, the subject that's in focus is about this far away from the lens. Now,
the working distance is the physical distance between the front of the lens
and the subject. Now if you've got a longer macro lens, something like a 200mm,
then you can stand farther from your subject while keeping it the
same size in your photo. This means that you've got a bigger working distance.
However, keep in mind that working distance also depends on the actual
length of the lens that you're using - not focal length, but the lens's physical
construction. The easiest example is if you put a lens hood on this lens. You
obviously haven't changed the focal length, but you did reduce your working
distance. So, for macro photography, you'll almost always want a large working
distance. It's why I recommend a 100mm macro lens or longer to most
photographers. Otherwise, you just get too close to your subject, and you might
scare it away or even just block the light. All right, term number two is
magnification. And this has to do with how big your subject is on your camera
sensor versus how big the subject is in the real world. And the simplest case is
when you're at one-to-one magnification. This just means that the subject's size on
your camera sensor is equal to its size in the real world. So here is a roughly
accurate full-frame sensor, 36 millimeters across. If I lay this 30 millimeter
ring on top of the camera sensor, you can see that it's almost
covering it. And imagine taking a photo right now. The ring will fill almost the
entire frame. Now, I did this, and here's what it looked like. And it's pretty
magnified. If I focused instead at one-to-two magnification, that ring wouldn't take up
nearly as much space. And so on. I could do one-to-four magnification, and then one-to-ten
magnification. And now it's pretty clear that we're not even doing macro
photography at all. Also, I've only been using a full-frame sensor at this point,
but it doesn't actually matter what sensor size you use. Say that I've got a
larger sensor, like medium format. In this case, one to one magnification still
means that the ring is the same size in the real world as its projection on the
camera sensor, even though it takes up a smaller percentage of the frame. Now, when
you're picking a macro lens, I strongly recommend getting something with at
least one-to-one magnification. You'll see some lenses that claim to be macro
even though they're only one-to-two magnification, or maybe even less. On the
flip side, some lenses are more than one-to-one magnification. They might be two-
to-one or even more. Now, this means that the subject is twice as big on your
sensor as it is in the real world. And these are more specialized lenses, but
depending on the subjects that you shoot, they might be very useful. So, you
understand the basic terminology. You know which type of macro lenses I
recommend. Now let's talk about two of the biggest challenges in macro
photography, and those are getting enough light and getting enough depth of field.
Going into macro photography, it's important to know that higher
magnification decreases your depth of field. There's no way around it. If you're
at one-to-one, only a small part of your subject will be completely sharp, and the
rest will be out of focus. So, what do you do about it? Well, the simplest answer is
don't use super high magnifications - but that's also a really bad answer.
There's tons of amazing subjects that are so small that you need to shoot at
one-to-one magnification in order to capture them properly. But there is still
a bit of truth in that statement. If you're just starting out in macro
photography, it will be easier if you work with slightly larger subjects -
something like dragonflies or flowers. You can actually photograph them in much
the same way that you would shoot a regular, non-macro photo. Now, you might
still have some depth of field issues, but they won't be nearly as bad. But what
about when you *do* want to shoot at one-to-one? Well, in that case, my
recommendation is to use a really narrow aperture. I tend to shoot my macro photos
at f/16 or f/22. And that basically solves the depth of field problem, but it
creates some other problems. Most importantly, you cut down on a tremendous
amount of light at these apertures. Now, add that to the fact that you're already
very close to your subject, so you're blocking a lot of natural light. And
chances are you're shooting at fast shutter speeds to minimize camera shake,
which darkens your photos even more! So, to get bright enough photos, there are a
few solutions. Option one is just to use a wide aperture instead of a narrow one,
and then deal with the fact that your depth of field will be almost invisible.
This can actually work really well if your goal is a photo that's mostly out-
of-focus blur. For example, I took this photo focused at one-to-one with my
lens's widest aperture, and I like how it looks. But that's clearly not a workable
approach most of the time, because you'll often want more detail than this on your
subject. Another option, then, is to shoot something called a focus stack. This is
when you take multiple photos of the same subject, each focused slightly
farther back than the one before it. Then, in Photoshop or some other software,
combine the sharpest part of each photo into a single image.
Now, the big problem with this approach is that you pretty much need to do it
from a tripod, and your subject can't be moving. So it's great if you're shooting
in a studio, but it's often impossible in the field. Instead, the best option for a
lot of photographers is to continue using a really narrow aperture, but just
use a flash as well. When you have a flash that's so close to your subject,
it actually outshines daylight. And, that way, you can shoot at even f/22 and still
get a bright enough photo. But you can't solve one problem without creating
another, and in this case your flash has to output very beautiful light, or it's
not worth it. You don't want your subject to have ugly shadows and bright specular
highlights. It just won't look good. So, to get nice light, you need to then diffuse
your flash. Now, you can buy a little pop-up diffuser for ten dollars online,
and the link to the one that I recommend is below. Or you can do what I do and
make your own out of cardboard and plastic. Either way, doesn't matter. The
key is that you need to experiment with what looks good. All right, now that
you've got the basics of depth of field and lighting, let's talk about the
specific camera settings you should use for macro photography. No generalizations;
I'm going to give you exact exposure values that I recommend for different
types of macro work.
First up is aperture. Now, let's assume that you're shooting one-to-one macro,
and you're using a flash. Really, at this point, your goal is to get enough depth
of field without using an aperture that's too narrow. You'll want to avoid f/32,
f/45, and anything more than that, because those apertures start to become
fairly blurry. And that's because of something called diffraction - not the
topic of this video, but I did include a link below to our Photography Life
article on the subject. So, what exact aperture should you use? Well, you want a
lot of depth of field, and you want to avoid blur from diffraction. Now, ignore
Canon cameras for a minute, because they actually calculate f-stop a bit
differently from everyone else. Other than them, a good balance is somewhere
from f/16 to f/22. But that's with a full-frame camera. If you have an aps-c
camera like Nikon DX, that recommendation becomes f/10 to f/14. Or, if you use a
Micro Four Thirds camera, that recommendation is f/8 to f/11. They all
give you the same depth of field. The difference with Canon, though, is a bit
confusing. I won't get into the technical details, but basically you want to cut
all these numbers in half. And that's because aperture in general behaves a
bit differently at high magnification. And all the other brands take this into
account. Canon does not. Now, it's a little bit annoying, but here's the formula. I'm
gonna leave it up for a moment. If you don't believe me, read the manuals for
Canon's own macro lenses. They say the exact same thing. All it really means is
that you need to be more careful about your aperture if you're a Canon shooter,
because you might be effectively shooting at a smaller aperture than what
the camera says. So, the good news, all the other settings are so much easier. Your
shutter speed, for example, should stay exactly at your flash sync speed, usually
1/200th of a second, maybe 1/250th. And after that is your actual
flash power. Now, this one should generally hover around 1/3 to 1/4
power. You don't want it to be too high, because
then your flash will recharge slowly and you'll have to wait a few seconds
between taking photos. For now, set it manually to one fourth power. We'll go
back in a minute and make flash automatic, but
not quite yet. And then the last setting is ISO. This is when you actually want to
start taking sample photos of a real-world object. I recommend just a
normal leaf focused at one-to-one magnification. Take photos as you ramp up
your ISO, and give your flash time to recharge between shots. Then, stop taking
pictures when you get one that's properly exposed. Now, say this happens at
ISO 400. Then you would set that ISO, 400, on your camera, and not change it. Lastly,
go back and turn your flash to automatic. Now the flash will change its own power
based on how reflective your subject is, but even though it's in automatic mode,
you know that it will hover around that 1/4 power mark because of what we did
earlier. Now, you still might need to adjust your flash compensation if it's
consistently taking photos that are too dark or too bright, but that's really all
that it takes. Your camera settings are now perfect for one-to-one macro
photography. Although, of course, you should experiment with these numbers and
make sure that they work for you. And again, if you're shooting something
farther away like a flower, you have so much more flexibility. In that case, I
recommend an easier approach. Just use your lens's widest aperture, or something
close. Maybe f/4. Pick a shutter speed that you can handhold safely, like 1/250th
of a second. And then set your ISO to whatever value gives you a good
exposure. You can even turn on Auto ISO. This is what I tend to do at this point.
There's no need for a flash if you have enough light. Just photograph it like
you'd capture any other subject. And that wraps up camera settings! Next is
focusing, which is more difficult than in some other types of photography, but not
as hard as you might think.
The first thing to know about focusing in macro photography is that your
camera's autofocus system probably can't keep up. Again, this is only true with
high magnification photography. You're probably fine if you're photographing
flowers. But when you're at one-to-two magnification, or one-to-one
magnification, focusing can be really tricky. Even at f/22, your depth of field
is so thin that you almost have to time your photos between heartbeats. So here's
the best method. Focus manually to whatever magnification you want.
I usually go as far as my lens can: one-to-one. Make sure that all your
camera settings are right, and then look through your viewfinder if your camera
has one. Get close to your subject and start to frame your photo. Slowly rock
forward and backward until the right spot on your subject is in focus. It's
absolutely not a perfect method, but it's the best that I've found. With enough
practice, you can even track focus on a moving subject, like in this photo that I
took of a bug walking across a flower. Of course, if your subject isn't moving, by
all means use a tripod. You can focus automatically or manually at that point
with good results. But that's just not practical for a lot of subjects. Lastly,
I'll note that it's so much easier to take macro photos when it's not windy
outside. Focusing can be a nightmare in windy conditions, and even a light breeze
is a huge factor in macro photography. And that's it! I hope that you learned
something from this video. Macro photography is all about practice,
so go out, put these techniques to the test. Take some good photos even in your
own backyard. Also, just briefly, this is the first
video in a weekly series that we're starting at Photography Life. Now, we've
had a YouTube channel for forever, but we haven't really posted much to it, so I
would appreciate your feedback. If you liked something, didn't like something,
please leave a comment below. I will take it into account for future videos. And if
you're excited about this new series, I hope that you subscribe! This is Spencer
Cox with Photography Life, and I will see you next week!