I am in no way a professional photographer: my gear includes a Nikon D5200 body, with the Nikkor 18-55mm VR II kit lens, the Nikkor 55-300mm VR zoom lens, and the latest addition, the Nikkor 50mm 1.4G prime lens. My favorite combo is still the Nikon D5200 body + Nikkor 18-55mm VR II – no offense to the other lenses. The reason why I decided to write this article is because I have seen a lot of newbies considering the kit lens as just a piece of glass with no merits at all. That is not entirely true – it’s one of the best lenses to start with, and with the right technique you can achieve a lot with the so-called kit lens!
Five tips for handheld insect macro photography
With macro photography, we can discover entirely new worlds and see tiny creatures in a completely new light. In this video, Micael Widell gives you five tips that will help you find the ideal subjects and then nail focus and exposure for some amazing macro shots.
Learn how to shoot psychedelic macro photos using oil, water, and food coloring
Ray Scott of Visual Art Photography Tutorials shows us a creative way of shooting macro photos with oil, water, and food coloring. It’s a simple process that yields a variety of artistic results that look totally psychedelic.
You don’t need much for this project except for a few household items you already have. Apart from the oil, water, and food coloring, you’ll need a sheet of glass, a big transparent bowl, small containers for the water and food coloring, and an eye dropper. Although not required, you can also use poster boards to add more color to your images
Check out the world’s first terapixel macro photo of a food mosaic
Even in the age of high-resolution cameras, it’s still quite difficult to fathom that anyone could create a terapixel image. But that’s precisely what the folks at GIGAmacro did at a SIGGraph Conference in Vancouver, B.C. with an 80 plus-foot long mosaic as its subject. The resulting image is so big that if you were to print it at 300 dpi, it would be taller than the One World Trade Center at 1,825 feet long. What’s even more impressive is that you can zoom into any part of the image on a macro level. You can view the entire photo now on GIGAmacro’s website.
Full Frame vs Micro Four Thirds in Macro Photography
When I do macro photography, I do it mostly freehand, outdoors, and when possible, in natural light. I love my Sony A7 and the abundance of affordable macro lenses available for it via adapters. But one thing that I often struggle with, and sometimes damn my full frame sensor for, is the minuscule depth of field.
So one day, I got the idea to pick up a macro lens for my newly purchased Micro Four Thirds camera: The Panasonic Lumix G80 (known as G85 in the United States). In this article, I want to briefly go through some important aspects to consider when you pick between full frame and crop sensor for macro photography.
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This is what it’s like to shoot ultra large format wet plate macro in a cherry blossom tree
Because the snowdrop shoot what so much fun, I wanted to do something like that again. After I saw the cherry blossoms on my tree, it was crystal clear what comes up next. I wanna shoot one of these with my wet plate camera, but this time I will shoot them on the tree.
When I was little, this tree was my climbing adventure. This tree has seen better days – the weather from the recent years started to ruin some parts of it. But it is still beautiful in the springtime.
How to use mirrors to get perfect axial lighting on macro subjects
They often say that photography is all just smoke and mirrors. And, in this case, they’re half right. Mirror-like reflections certainly are involved. This is lighting setup that never would’ve occurred to me had I not stumbled across it on a friend’s Facebook post. UK based photographer Dougie Smith typically brings people into his studio, but he also shoots photographs for Chards, a dealer of rare and collectable coins.
Dougie’s been a friend of mine for years, so when I saw him post a couple of setup shots to his Facebook profile, I had to send him a message asking if I could share them here with you guys. He and Chards agreed, so here we are. It’s a fascinating setup called axial lighting, and it overcomes some of the problems you see with typical macro ringflash setups.[Read More…]
Take extreme macro photos by adapting a microscope
It’s not that difficult to add computer control to a microscope. Now I realize this is not a huge need for the general photographer, however, some of us use photography in our profession, not weddings or models but in my case, I’m a geologist. We tend to take lots of pictures in the course of our work. We also need to look at samples utilizing a microscope.
Usually, we examine rock samples by slicing them into very thin sections, grinding them down to a few microns, and then passing polarized light through them in our weird geological microscopes. Now sometimes, we need to look at items in three dimensions. Especially with very small fossils. The problem with photographing them is that the depth of field for most microscopes is extremely narrow, so you end up with only a small slice of the fossil in focus. The ability to do focus stacking has revolutionized our visualization of fossils. The problem is that most macro rigs don’t offer the magnification needed without going through a lot of bother.
An A-Z guide for making fantastic water droplets splash photos
There’s something special about photos of water droplets. I personally like the element of surprise, because you can’t predict the exact shape you’re going to get. You can create fantastic photos using only water and some color, and photographer Adam Karnacz shares an in-depth tutorial for making them. He’ll guide you through all the steps, from setup to printing your final work. So, watch his video to learn what you’ll need and how to approach this interesting area of photography.
Sony macro just got a lot more interesting with the new Novoflex reverse lens mount adapter
Well, this is pretty cool. A reverse lens mount adapter for Sony that you can actually autofocus with. Designed for the Sony E-Mount cmaeras, including the A7 series, A9 series and APS-C format A6000 series, the new NEX-Retro from Novoflex lets you turn any Sony lens into a macro.
Being able to reverse a lens on a body isn’t a new idea, but what’s special about this one is that passes along all of the electronic functions. This means you get full control over aperture and autofocus from the reversed lens as if it were mounted normally. It’ll even pass along the EXIF data.
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