CalevPhoto

Progression in macro insect photography

For a fun post, I thought I would cover the progression that a macro photography typically makes.  This covers both where I have started as well as where I hope to go.

Stage 1

In this stage, you can recognize what insect the photo is of.  With these shots, you feel it is extremely cool that you caught the insect on camera.  What you miss is that the framing may be awful, the insect is out of focus, and the lighting may be poor.

Here is a good example from when I first bought my camera.  You can see that this is a fly, but it is looking the wrong way, is too small for this shot, and should not be centered in the viewfinder.  The focus could also be improved.

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Tips for focusing in macro

One of the single biggest problems new macro photographers have is the issue of focusing.  This is particularly evident in insect shots, where most of them are a bit out of focus.  In this post, I will provide some tips for focusing.

First, if you are using autofocus at all when shooting macro, turn it off.  In macro, when you change the focus using the focus ring, you are actually changing the magnification.  Generally, you care what the magnification is on a given shot. The camera, on the other hand, has no idea. Therefore, do not let the camera do this for you.  Set the magnification yourself (most macro lenses have it printed on the barrel) and focus by moving towards and away from the subject.

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Wimberley macro brackets review

For some time, I have made use of a pair of Wimberley macro brackets.  Now that I have used them in a number of different situations, I thought I would share my experiences with them.

I had looked at brackets for several months prior to buying these.  In terms of macro brackets, the two main competitors are Really Right Stuff and Kirk Photo.  After some consideration, I chose the Wimberley macro brackets, but for those interested the following are the reasons I did not buy the other choices.

Really Right Stuff - For awhile, this was my first choice.  Only when I learned about the Wimberley brackets did I change my mind.  In order for the bracket to work with the MT-24EX, I needed to buy another flash mount.  Also, I needed at least one telescoping arm to get the flashes past the lens.  Therefore, the price came out a bit higher than the Wimberley solution.

The main reason I chose the Wimberley was flexibility.  The RRS solution is nice - but the Wimberley brackets can literally bend in almost any direction.  The RRS brackets are limited by the flexibility of the arm - which can be rotated around the bracket and extended.

Kirk Photo - This solution looks a bit more flexible than the RRS, but looks a bit flimsy.  I hesitated whether it would take a 580EX without issue or something heavier.  It is also not as flexible as the Wimberley.

Iguana taken in Mexico’s Riviera Maya.  Canon 180mm macro with two Wimberley lights. 1/125 f/7.1. 

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Zen and the art of the MP-E 65

Recently I lent my MP-E 65 macro lens to two colleagues at work.  Both are very good photographers but had never used this lens before.  Interestingly, neither one was able to come up with decent shots from the lens.

Comments that I heard were

“I just don’t have that much patience.”

“I took a number of shots, but they all came out blurry”

I feel like some sort of zen master, when I prognose that the reason that they failed to take good shots had nothing to do with their photography skills (they’re both better than I), but that they were unable to find their inner peace to use the lens correctly.

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How to photograph flies

When I first started taking macro photographs, I thought for sure that all closeup shots of flies were fake.  How could they get the fly to stay still for so long?  After a number of failed experiments, I finally managed to get my first fly shot.  After that, I slowly figured out the hard way how to get closeup pictures of flies, which I now do rather often.  Once you learn how it’s done, it’s really not overly difficult.

I take most of my fly images with my MP-E 65.  Once in awhile I use my 180L but I like the larger size of the fly that I can achieve with magnifications higher than 1x.  Of course, this requires that I get even closer to the fly.  When I use my 180L, it is much easier to get shots but I tend not to like them as much unless it happens to be a large fly.  For lighting, I always use a MT-24EX.  For the most part, taking high quality pictures of insects with only ambient light is not practical.

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Canon 500D or Macro Lens

On a recent post I received a question over how the Canon 500D diopter compares with a true macro lens.  When I first bought my camera, I knew I wanted to do macro but I didn’t have the money for a true macro lens.  I wound up purchasing the Sigma 80-400 4.5-5.6 OS lens along with the 500D diopter.  I quickly fell in love with macro photography and saved up for a true macro lens and once I had one I eventually sold the 500D.  The following is a shot I took with the 500D when visiting the zoo with my kids.

However, let’s get more specific on the differences between a diopter and a true macro lens.

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Macro Photography when Traveling

Macro photography is easily my favorite type of photography.  Given that travel is also one of my great passions, it makes sense to combine the two.  After having taken macro equipment on my last several trips - to Thailand, Israel/Jordan, and Mexico, I have learned a bit about what equipment to bring and what not to bring.

First of all, you have to be very realistic about the place you are going to?  What types of macro pictures will you really take there?  While macro photography can be done anywhere, some types of trips make certain types of macro photography difficult.  For instance, my wife and kids generally will not sit around and wait while I setup a tripod to take a picture of a flower.  While I occasionally use a tripod for my flower pictures in gardens around Seattle, I never use a tripod for macro photography on vacation (I do use one for sunrise/sunset and night shots though).  The following are my experiences on different types of vacations.

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My first attempt at combining macro shots

Recently I have been thinking a bit about combining shots to achieve a greater depth of field.  When I noticed that some of the shots I took today of a spider with its prey were similar but had different parts in focus, I decided to give it a try.  The following is the end result.

Continue for more on how I did this.

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Tips for Macro Photography

Recently I gave a presentation on macro photography for several of my coworkers.  I have been trying to figure out how to easily get it into blog format, but it’s rather difficult converting a Powerpoint presentation into a blog.  The following are some tips I placed at the end of the presentation on macro photography.

Tip #1 - Keep in mind the orientation of the subject

The following are two pictures I took recently.  Note that the first isn’t very interesting.  You can easily make out that it’s a hoverfly but other than that the shot brings no emotion.  The second picture is quite a bit better - not only due to the reflection of the bug but also because the bug is facing forward.  In general always try to find a pose that is interesting - don’t just take the bug unless you are trying for an identification shot.

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Playing around with macro lights

This weekend, while putting together a presentation on macro photography that I will do for the photography group at my work, I played around a bit with macro flash arrangements.  Macro lighting is often not considered by many beginning macro photographers - who spend the time working on whether to purchase a macro lens or diopters or extension tubes but wind up with macro shots that are dark or blurry.  Here’s an example of such a shot.

This, and all of the shots in this post, were taken with my MP-E 65 in 1x.  While my 180L is closer to being a “normal” macro lens, I have found that I need to light objects taken with my 180L much differently than those from my MP-E 65.  Since at 1x the MP-E 65 is close to being a standard 65mm macro lens, in this mode it is closer to the more popular 100mm macro lenses.

As you can see, the shot is very fuzzy.  I took this shot in aperture priority mode on the camera.  Obviously the shutter speed was not fast enough to compensate for hand holding the camera + lens.  When I metered the subject myself and chose a higher shutter speed the shot was completely black.  Now let’s discuss how I changed things to improve this shot of one of my kids’ Kinder Toys sitting on a plant.

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