Macro photography is an amazing opportunity to enter the world of beautiful surprises. Minute details, fine textures and life size reproduction are enough to get you excited. However investing in a macro lens is not always a feasible option, that too, just for experiencing the fun of capturing the macro details.

If you’re immensely interested in trying out your hands at macro photography, reverse lens technique is one of the affordable ways at your disposal. Using a close-up filter on the lens barrel or attaching extension tubes and bellows are also good options to consider, but using a reverse macro ring / adapter or a coupler ring is far more inexpensive. Reverse lenses actually offer a powerful way of shooting macros with more than life size reproduction.

A true macro lens allows you to fill the frame with 1:2 or 1:1 reproduction, that is either half the size of the small subject or equivalent to the life size of the macro subject. The reverse lens technique on the other hand allows you to get extremely close to the subject to achieve up to 3x life size projection. Let’s see why does this happen.

When you reverse the lens you essentially try to reverse the way the lens projects an image to the camera sensor. There is a little bit of optics to it. Normally a lens looks at a wider field of view and focuses it on a much smaller plane, i.e., the camera sensor. Thus the lens looks at the bigger picture and forms a small image on the sensor.

On reversing the lens, the lens turns up the theory of “big to small” to “small to big”. The reversed lens will focus on the narrow plane to form a bigger picture.

Reverse Lens Technique — The Technicalities

Reverse lens technique is simply about mounting a reversed lens to your camera, that is, attaching the camera lens in such a way that the rear element points outwards and front element (lens barrel) mounts on the camera.

This can be done by using a lens reversing ring, one side of which mounts to the camera and the other holds the reversed lens in place. You can buy one from Amazon or Adorama for as low as $9.95.

Adorama Lens Reversing Ring for Canon EOS Lenses with a 52mm Filter Thread.

When you reverse the camera lens, you however loose the camera’s ability to communicate with the lens. This means no auto focus and no control over lens aperture. To control the aperture, you will thus need a lens with manual aperture ring. Any Nikkor D-series lens or Canon FD lenses for instance will do. If your lens doesn’t have a manual aperture ring, you will not be able to stop down the light and thus will have to work with maximum aperture. Nevertheless, you can still give it a try for some beautiful abstractions.

You can also achieve the reverse lens set up by stacking a secondary lens over the primary lens. For instance placing a reversed 50mm prime lens over your 18-55mm kit lens. All you need is two lenses and a lens coupling ring.

Nikon AF-S 18-55 + Nikon 50mm 1.8D reversed

The advantage of using this technique is that you no longer need to look for a lens with the manual aperture ring. You can leave the reversed lens open at the widest aperture and stop down the primary lens for increasing the depth of field.

How To Shoot With A Reverse Lens

Reversed lens technique is a specialized set-up. You cannot simply point at the subject and shoot it as you normally do. The reversed lens has its own caveats.  Check out the following tips to work out with reverse lens.

1. Attach The Reverse Lens

   If you have two lenses go in for lens stacking and if you have one you can attach a reverse lens by using a reverse lens adapter as discussed above. You can use a fast prime lens or zoom lens or both. With zoom lens however keep one thing in mind. When you reverse a zoom lens, it’s zooming mechanism will also reverse. That is you will have to zoom out to actually zoom in with the reverse lens.

2. Image Stabilization

   The slightest of hand blur or camera shake at such magnification can completely ruin the photograph. However, if your camera has IS feature need not worry, else rest the camera on a sturdy surface or mount it on the tripod. If your camera provides mirror lock up, turn it on. This will also help in minimizing the motion blur.

3. Turn On The Manual Focus

   Auto focusing is no help here. You will have to turn on the manual focus. You will have to set the focus by physically moving the camera closer to the subject. You will have to work in the range of 1 inch or so. If possible move the subject closer to the camera as struggling with tripod is not a feasible option.
   

4. Play Around With Aperture Settings

   The camera with reverse lens looses all the automatic features. Therefore, turn on the manual mode. DOF is extremely shallow at close proximity and you will have to stop down the aperture for better focus. Set the aperture to f/8 and experiment by stopping the light by varying the aperture, shutter speed and zoom levels. The viewfinder will blacken out as soon as you adjust the aperture ring manually and as such hitting the sweet spot requires a trial and error approach.

   Take multiple shots of the same scene and later stack the images in Photoshop for a sharper focus.

5. Lighting

   At such a close proximity, getting proper exposure is a challenge. Sometimes you will end up casting shadow of your lens and other times there will be too less light entering the camera owing to narrow aperture. So try to illuminate the subject with natural light, artificial light or even an external flash will do. You can get some great macro photographs in a small studio set up.

   

   Macro Photography Setup

6. Protect The Lens

   The reversed lens potentially exposes the pins transmitting the electronic signals and the internal glass element of the lens to dust. This can greatly damage the lens quality. Therefore, you need to be extra careful with your lens in this kind of set-up. Keep the lens protector cap handy and place it on when not shooting.

Rest you will learn by trying it out. So get ready to have fun with extreme close ups. Ans don’t forget to share your pics!

Macro photography is a world of fascinations. The fine details and unexplored world of macros make it all the more refreshing each time you take a look at some of the perfectly finished macro photographs. Ecstaticist’s photostream, Lord V’s photographs and Macorlin’s shots find a special mention in this respect. Shallow depth of field, sharply focused details and amazing macro shots is what makes the difference. Beautiful shots of water droplets, specially morning dew refraction shots are enough to take you by surprise. For instance the image to the right (shot by Ecstaticist) is an inspiration for trying out unique composition.

The collection named A Thousand Drops Of Light, showcases Ecstaticist’s passion for photographing the water droplets with simply amazing shots like this one. While Ecstaticist completely relies on in-camera setting to get such lovely shots, you can try out something like this by employing the technique called Focus Stacking.

What Is Focus Stacking?

Focus stacking as the name suggests is the imaging technique wherein a set of images shot at different focus distance are stacked onto one another to result in sharp focused image. In other words, focus stacking is an image processing technique used for increasing the depth of field in a macro shot.

Focus stacking basically finds its application in macro photography, where getting sufficient depth of field becomes a challenge owing to the following facts:

1. Distance To The Subject: The lesser the difference between the subject and the camera, shallower the DOF is. This is what happens when you use the macro lens — you get closer to the subject and thus the background (and foreground) is blurred. This can often result in blurring everything else than the focus point, for instance, the outer pollen grains in case of this photograph.
   

   Selective Focus

2. The Aperture: When you tune in the macro mode on your camera, it automatically sets the larger aperture to easily take the close up shots. This reduces the depth of field considerably, thus blurring the out-of-focus subject.

As an inference, the camera settings for macro photography makes it difficult to get high DOF. Focus stacking thus enables you to get the entire subject in sharp focus while leaving the background soft and smoothly blurred.

How To Shoot Your Stack Of Images For Focus Stacking

Put on the macro lens, tune the camera settings for macro photography and set the camera on the sturdy surface or the tripod. Now all you need is to take the macro shots of the subject, by varying the focus points though. Take the multiple shots of the same subject with same setting and from the same point of view but by changing the focus point each time. You can change the field of view either by rotating the focal ring or by moving the camera. While doing so, make sure that the current focus point overlaps the in-focus part of the previous image. This helps in getting accurate results upon automation.

Focus Stacking In Photoshop CS5

Transfer your images to the computer and open them with Photoshop to let the magic happen. If you don’t already have the stack of images, you can download the files from here to see how image stacking works in Photoshop. Here are the steps for stacking the images in Photoshop.

1. Open Photoshop and go to File > Automate > Photomerge.
2. Load the source files by browsing the files on your system and select Auto from the Layout pane. This will auto-align the images for you. Make sure that all the checkboxes in the Source Files section are unchecked.
3. This will load the individual images as layers in the Layers pallete.
4. Select all the layers (CTRL + click each layer or select the first layer and hold Shift and select last layer). Go to Edit > Auto Blend Layers. Choose Stack Images, select Seamless Tones and Colors and click OK.
   

   Auto Blend Layers

5. This will blend the selected layers and result in a seamless composition with overall sharp focus, except for some roughness towards the edges. Crop the edges to arrive at the final image. Check out the final image. It’s sharp, crisp and has increased depth of field.
   

   Final Image: Sharp Focus, Increased DOF

You can also use CombineZP for applying this tecnhnique, however the process may change. CombineZP is the free alternative to Photoshop and you can get it here to try your hands at focus stacking just in case you don’t have Photoshop.

And now it’s time to get set go for focus stacking!

Macro photography is filled with unique and unusual surprises. Whatever the subject be, the art of photographing macros unveils the fine details, instinctive textures, rhythmic patterns and the unknown secrets of nature. The unusuality and uniqueness of the macro photography raptures, spell bounds and draw the viewers attention into the world of secretive beauty. As a beginner, taking the close up shots, filling the frame with minute details and exaggerating the elegance by practicing shallow depth of field is what macro photography conveys. But as you advance in the art form, trying out new and creative techniques gives you an edge over the conventional photographers and thus make you truly artistic. While macro photography inherently signifies getting closer to the subject, here are 5 techniques to help you explore the elegance of macro world creatively.

1. Photograph The Artifacts

   The art of photographing the macros stretches far beyond exploring the beauty of nature. While getting closer and photographing the flowers, insects, butterflies or underwater life is sure to always deliver appeasing results, taking up to photograph the minor details of the objects in your small home studio is good to give your creativity a boost. When you are at it, i.e photographing the toys, ribbons, table top pieces, buttons, beads and other inanimate objects, follow the technique of photographing the artifacts. Artifacts? What does an artifact mean — certain distortions or a building block. Well, nothing of that sort. Photographing the artifacts refer to the technique of photographing the details in isolation to the entire object. This is to say that instead of capturing the essence of the object as a whole, pick some specific portion / part of the object and present it exquisitely. This gives you an opportunity to engage the visitors in the mysterious revelations.

   

   Untitled by Rosemary

2. Frame Compelling Abstractions

   Get up close and personal with the subject not only through your camera’s eye (zooming in the subject with your macro lens) but also with the photographer’s eye, gives you an opportunity to compose the colorful patterns and textures. The colorful patterns, fine details and textures when covered in its entirety result in exciting abstractions. Leaving behind the shape and form of the subject and focusing on the integrity of the details of the subject matter delivers fascinating results. You can try this out in Photoshop as well — pick a macro photograph and and crop the image to frame only the minute details. Listen to what your admirers and critiques have to say on that.

   

   Feathers forming abstract pattern

3. Implement Impressionism

   Barring the age old principles of creating sharp and realistic images, inspired by the impressionist painters, impressionism opens up a whole lot of creative possibilities for photographers. The technique especially works well for creatively photographing flowers; by emphasizing light, color and motion. Instead of striving for clarity, going on for hazy and dreamy look by implementing ghost effect, multiple exposure, selective focus, long exposures and interplay of light and colors help you in achieving creative captures (as portrayed in the following image).

   

   Emphasizing light, color and motion

4. Aim For Transparency

   Interplay of light not only helps you in achieving the so-called impressionism, but also comes in handy for creating silhouettes and back-light effects. One interesting thing about backlighting with flowers is that it makes room for transparency. Depending on the direction of light, intensity of light and the opacity of the petals back-light fills the frame with the unusual shine and glow. The morning dew, rain water and shadow of pollen grains or overlapping petals add to the mesmerizing transparency effect.

   

   Achieving transparency through back lighting

5. Capture The Beauty Of Water Drops

   Last but not the least, the discussion about the creative close-up techniques is incomplete without this one — wonderfully captured water drops (on the surface or dropping off). Capturing them either as the ornaments to the flowers or as a solo drop of water with reflections of surroundings (and not to forget the refractions) make up for unique, unusual and interesting shots. Check out for yourself.

   

   Wonderful capture of water drops

Which techniques do you apply to make your macro shots creative?

Small, simple and beautiful is the essence of Macro Photography. Close-ups of plants, flowers, animals and tiny insects complement the subjects with beauty and fineness. Getting closer to these subjects is analogous to getting personal with them, to invade their beautiful world filled with plethora of amazing minute details. It reveals beautiful patterns and textures which are not easily noticeable to our naked eyes. The effects created by macros range from softness and delicacy of flowers to attractiveness of those speaking eyes to the spiky tentacles.

Macro Photography lets you zoom into the new world of tiny subjects. It encourages an innovative approach for moving closer to where you belong — “The Nature”. Lets get closer to the nature and capture the close-ups. Here are a few tips and tricks that help you experiment and experience the joys of the compact yet elaborate world of macros.

1. Camera settings: The first thing to do is to tune your camera to the required settings.
   • Macro Mode: If your camera supports a macro subject mode, switch on to it. The “Macro” mode takes care of all the required settings. It automatically selects the optimum camera settings for you.
   • Switch Off The Flash: It is recommended to switch the flash off while taking such close-ups. When the flash is fired at such a small range of distance it tends to overexpose the subject and hide all the details. It washes away the fine details and also destroys the subtlety of your subject. Sometimes when shooting tiny organisms, it can chase your subject away (of course after the shot, but you don’t want to chase way your subjects).
   • Aperture priority: If your camera does not come with a macro mode, you can set your camera to “Aperture Priority” and select the widest possible aperture. Thereafter zoom your camera’s lens into the subject to capture the fine details.
2. Extensions & Accessories: To make your close-ups come out perfectly, you can even make use of certain extensions and accessories. Some of the accessories worth mentioning for macros are:
   • Tripod or minipod: When you set your camera to widest possible aperture, it brings along with it the possibilities of blurring the images due to hand shakes etc. It is recommended to use tripod/minipod to compensate for slow shutter speeds. It can be quite a challenge to get perfect close-ups with hand-held shooting.
   • Macro Lenses: To attain an excellent macro images dedicated macro lenses should be used. These supplementary close-up lenses allow you to get as close as you’d like – to dive in and explore the finest details.
   • Extension Rings: To get closer to your subject you can also use extension rings. Extension rings are meant to be fitted between body and lens to reduce the minimum focus distance , with only a minor loss of light.
3. Things To Remember: While shooting close-ups make sure to not let your shadows cast over the subject as they may cast ugly lines. Also at such small dimensions DOF can pose challenges. Sometimes only a part of the subject is in focus, at other times it’s the entire field of view in focus. Experiment and set up you aperture to get the effect you want. And last but not the least, maintain a safe distance from insects etc.

Engage yourself in Macro Photography and explore the world of tiny objects. Impress your friends and enjoy the spectacular beauty of nature through the lens.

Macro photography can be real fun. Macro photography brings out the fineness and detail which is not usually seen by the human eye. The subject being larger than life definitely adds to the fun. Here are a few tips on how you can do better at macro photography.

1. Camera Settings [Macro Mode]

   The camera’s macro mode is designed to give you the best results for macro shots. It will automatically set the maximum aperture and other settings to get the best out of the shot.

2. The Specialized Macro Lens

   This is if your camera accepts interchangeable lenses. There are special lenses for macro photography which give you the best result. If you pursue keen interest in macro photography you should consider going in for a specialized lens for macro purpose. Or better yet you can try reverse lens technique for shooting extreme close-ups. Check out the tutorial here.

3. Light Set-up

   The direction of light can be used to bring the details in the texture (basically side lighting). It is thus important that the light does not fall from the direction of the camera. In simple words avoid using flash. Try to use existing light and use a reflector to cast light sideways which will enhance the details of the texture.

4. Avoid Shadows

   Being too close to the subject can result in you casting a shadow over the subject. Make sure you stay a safe distance.

5. Avoid Parallax Error

   At macro distances camera’s tend to amplify the difference between what shows up in the viewfinder and what shows up on the actual picture. This difference is referred to as parallax error. This happens when you are shooting with a compact camera. An SLR (or DSLR) shows you the same picture as you’d see from the lens and thus there is no parallax error.

6. Depth Of Field Considerations

   When you shoot macro it is important to remember that the depth of field is greatly reduced. This can look beautiful since it drives the viewer’s attention to the focus area. However other areas are left out of focus. If you like you can use a high f-number which will give you a small aperture, greater depth of field and an overall sharper image. If stopping down the f-number does not help, you can take multiple shots by varying the focus points and then stack the images to get crisp and sharp results.

How much of macro do you shoot?