Macro on the cheap.
I’ve always liked the idea of macro photography. IN particular, insects. Flickr is filled with many, many close ups of the little blighters faces but I wanted to get my own. Macro lenses cost *a lot* so I looked round for ways of doing it cheaper and there are plenty of them. After a bit of research it turns out that the simplest and cheapest methods are twofold, either reverse the lens, or extend the lens. A bit more digging around and it seems the best guys use both methods. (And I mean the best guys who don’t use macro lenses). (And just for clarification, macro refers to photography where the finished image is at least the same size on the screen as the object is in real life).
So I purchase some bellows off ebay. These extend the lens up to 100mm from the camera and that distance is variable. They arrive quickly from Hong Kong and I start practising, stick my 50mm f1.8 on the front and give them a go. Hmmm, bloody hell it’s hard. The depth of field (clear focusing range), is extremely narrow, unusably narrow. I check on the internet and with the lens 100mm away from the camera with f1.8 and I find out it’s practically nothing. Bummer. Bit more investigation and it turns out that with a canon, at least, there’s a trick. You can set the aperture as narrow as you can (f22) with the lens attached, press the DoF preview button and then remove the lens with the button still pressed and the lens will stay at f22.
OK, lets give it a go.
Great! Although it’s not that great. Only a tiny part of the head is in focus. Turns out that even at f22, the DoF is less than 1mm. OK. Also, at this aperture, the amount of light hitting the sensor is next to nothing, looking through the viewfinder shows very little and the pictures turn out so dark they’re not worth the while. You can use a flash but since the lens is only a few cm from the subject, it doesn;t help much. And with a high ISO with macro, the amount of noise is immense. More research.
Reversing ring then, and I don’t like this messing about with my lens, I need to find an easy way to set the aperture. So I also get hold of an old 50mm f1.8 analogue lens with a manual aperture ring. In an ebay frenzy I also buy a set of extension rings but more about them later.
The reversing ring allows a wider aperture for the same results and once it arrives I realise it’s a godsend. I snap away for hours, delete hundreds of pictures and quickly learn a lot about macro photography. For a start, living things move around a lot, usually too fast to get focus. Also, a good tripod is essential but since even on ebay, good tripods cost a lot of money, we’ll forget that for a while.
Things that don’t move are easy so I practise on them for a bit.
A lot clearer but it’s still not great. I experiment with the bellows longer and shorter and realise that by using full extension, I’m not gaining much. Yes, it’s right up close and personal but it’s too up close, the flash doesn’t reach and the DoF is useless. I roll the lens back a bit and realise around 50mm extension produces the best results (with a flash with the dispersion filter pulled down). Which is handy because the extension tubes I bought are around 60mm extension. Now I’m cooking and after a long period in the park I get two or three shots i’m happy with.
Some people use a soft filter on the flash and I’ll look at creating one (usually just a piece of foam strapped around the flash) but I got a shot i’m about 95% happy with almost by chance when I was unsuccesfully trying to capture some bees. Saw the fly, pointed, focussed, clicked away for about 10 shots. This one turned out great.
Click for bigger detail and seem my flickt stream for more examples.
Macro is very hard, requires masses of patience (I got three shots I liked today after taking about 100 exposures in 90 minutes) and some basic equipment but it cost me less than £40 extra on top of my existing kit so far and I doubt I’ll spend any more.
photography | admin | 
June 22, 2009 12:10 am
3 Comments
Other Links to this Post
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Subscribe
By Simon, June 22, 2009 @ 8:56 pm
The last fly shot is ace Jon
By samuri, June 22, 2009 @ 10:09 pm
Thanks. I’ve mostly sorted the hardware out I think as that shot shows, now it’s just photographer skill that needs fixing. Some of the stuff on flickr is just amazing, and a lot of it is done with exactly the same kit that I’ve got. Wish I lived somewhere that had big spiders.
By Mark, June 23, 2009 @ 12:16 am
Great attempts. Another cheap way you could go would be what I’ve done with my canon – Buy one of those manual lens adapters (I use olympus OM) you can get on ebay for a fiver, then get an old, manual macro lens off either ebay or a 2nd hand dealer. Mine’s the Tamron SP 90mm. Got a few flowers with it on Flickr, but managed some bees this evening – will put them up soon. The lens cost about £50, but I’m led to believe it was the one to have in its day. It’s still a mega faff to get insects – that’s why I take more pics of flowers – they don’t move very far!