With travel photography, one of the issues is prioritising equipment. You simply can’t carry everything you could possibly want to bring. If you do then it often hampers the overall travel experience as you’re weighed down by equipment and have to constantly look after it. For me, on my current trip that meant I couldn’t justify bringing a dedicated macro lens, especially when I had the XF56mm and XF50-140mm covering the similar focal lengths offered by the two available macro options. Instead I chose to pack both the 11mm and 16mm extension tubes (MCEX-11 and MCEX-16, about $90 each). Offering camera-lens communication that allows autofocus, these simple compact devices can turn nearly any lens into a macro option (but please check lens compatibility).
This photographer brings Lego characters to life with these movie inspired and humorous scenes
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With influences ranging from The Avengers and X-Men to Star Wars and The Martian, French photographer Sofiane Samial (AKA Samsofy) spends his days making amazing Lego photography in a project titled Legography.
Intriqued by Samsofy’s work, DIYP reached out to get some more insight into this project, discussing his inspirations, and how he creates them.
The Hidden Wonders of the Amazon
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Photographer Nicky Bay headed to the Amazon’s tropical rainforests, but he wasn’t after the jaguars, anacondas, sloths or piranhas the region is so famous for.
Instead, being a macro photography, Nicky set out to document the creatures so small they are often overlooked or disregarded.
If you like creepy-crawlies you will love these photos. If you don’t, you’ll probably remove the Amazon rainforest from your travel wishlist.
The Best Macro Lens You Probably Already Own
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Here’s a quick tip for amazing macro photography using a the best macro lens you probably already own…
Photographer Creates Mesmerizing Macro Images of Water Droplets on Ordinary Objects
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“Photography is fascinating and now I can say that it is not just my hobby. It is part of my life,” were the words of 36-year-old Bulgarian photographer Ivelina Blagoeva. But, her photography subjects are not those we traditionally associate with the industry. Rather than people or places or gorgeous sunsets, Ivelina chooses to focus on macro photography, bringing to life organic elements in beautiful color and detail while lighting her subjects in a very simple fashion.
Turn Your Smartphone Into an Awesome Macro Camera With This Simple Hack
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Smartphones are great, whether you’re grabbing quick snapshots of the kids smearing icing on themselves, making a low-budget film (they’re surprisingly good, actually), or immortalizing your visage in a selfie. But, without interchangeable lenses, one area where they lack is in focal control. Having this power over your technology is important for things like macro photography. While there are a variety of hacks for using your smartphone to capture tiny details, some can get rather complicated.
Instructables user Znaffi (we’ll call him Mr. X) shows us how to use a simple water droplet to turn your mobile device into a macro powerhouse. We touched on this a while back, but Mr. X gives us a full breakdown of this simple and basically-free technique.
First Hands On Review of the Venus Optics Laowa 15mm F/4 1:1 Macro Lens
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Hey everyone, thanks for visiting! I’m Will Chao, a wedding photographer in Melbourne. When I was first asked to review this lens, I didn’t believe such a lens existed and thought it was a low quality toy lens. I mean, how could I? A lens of this type has been unheard of until now, and suffice to say I was very pleasantly surprised.
Venus Optics Announces the Laowa 15mm f/4; The World’s Widest 1:1 Macro Lens
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Venus Optics, which recently made headlines with its 2:1 60mm f/2.8 macro lens with infinity focus, is back with another unusual.
This time it’s the manual focus Laowa 15mm f/4 wide-angle macro lens – an extremely interesting full-frame lens capable of creating highly unusual images.
DIY: Photographer Uses $0.5 TP Rolls To Diffuse $700 Macro Strobes
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Here is a great tip we got from Mark Thorpe and it has to do both with TP rolls and with Macro photography. It turns out that there is a great way to diffuse the the $750 Canon MT-24EX Macro Twin Lite Flash.
At heart the MT-24EX is a dual strobe system that sits around the lens and enables getting the light pretty close to your subject from two sides. Close means soft light (I mean think how huge a strobe at 3cm must look to an ant), and two-sided-illumination means significant shadow reduction.
But PixelHobo who need just a little bit more diffusion, attached two rings made from old desk lamps covered with toilet paper to get an even bigger light source. Not really sure if this is more simple or more clever.
For more information about the rig, visit Mark’s G+ post.
Yup, toilet paper is definitely a must for photographers.
The best way to do a focus stacking: Macro Focusing Rails vs Focus Variation
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This tutorial is about how to obtain a large depth-of-field using focus stacking.
The main question is: Is it better to use a macro rail or is it better to vary the focus of the lens?
As Alex, I use focus stacking (or “deep focus fusion”) quite often and most of the time I just shoot a series of photos with varied focus instead of a series with varied distance, using a rail.
Until now I always thought, that approach is a bit dirty, because it introduces changes in the magnification, but often it was the only way, because the depth of the object was far too deep for any rail. Imagine for example shooting a landscape. 🙂
But now, I wanted to know for sure what is the better method and and did some tests.
One thing I can say to start with: With complex scenes, it is a good idea, not to change the position of the camera!
But now let’s take a closer look:
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