Macro Photography for Beginners: Bringing it up to date.

Even though this set of notes was written with film cameras in mind, the same applies to digital SLRs which have the added advantage that instant results are available to know whether the lighting setup and focus and depth of field are correct. You can take literally hundreds of digital shots trying to get it right and it doesn?t cost anything apart from your time and patience.

Compact digital cameras often have a macro mode that indeed lets you get close to the subject and get a good image but they usually end up with the lens very close to the subject and that can annoy insects and alter their behaviour, plus make lighting difficult. The better solution is to use screw in close-up lenses and the longest focal length if the camera does have a filter adapter available.

In compact cameras look for the ?macro? mode (usually a tulip symbol) and maybe also a ?super macro? mode (tulip plus a ?s? is one way to show it). With Olympus compact digitals at least, the Macro mode usually allows the full zoom range of the camera to be used, and the camera just allows a closer than normal focusing range. To get closer the super macro mode usually limits the camera to one optimized focal length (in Olympus it seems to be around 60mm focal length when equivalent coverage of a 35mm camera is considered) and allows extremely close focusing. This is great for flowers etc but as mentioned before, insects hate the big glass eye so close to them.

Often the flash is automatically disabled on compact digital cameras when working at the ?super macro? distances, as the subject is too close for proper coverage. Make sure you have some other means of lighting in that case. There are reasonably priced slave flashes available now that will remote trigger off film or digital cameras so if you can manage to use the normal or macro mode with an attached filter holder and an auxiliary close-up lens then more interesting lighting can be achieved.

Some digital cameras allow the in-body flash to be set at lower output in order to still trigger the slave flash but not produce too much light from the position of the camera.

Some truly spectacular close-up and macro shots can be achieved with a digital camera and added flash(es) or using cheap desktop halogen lamps adjusted to get the effect you want. Of course the beauty of digital in this case is that the white balance can be automatically or manually set to suit the warmer colour temperature halogen lights.

With a digital SLR and a macro lens there is a sort of bonus in the macro department. The macro lens may provide close enough focus to get 1:1 on film, and be aware that the digital cameras with a reduced sensor size (like Canon 300D, 10D, Nikon D100, D70, Pentax *istD etc) do have a multiplication factor for the focal length due to the reduced coverage compared to 35mm film. Be it film or digital, it is still 1:1 life size at the film or sensor, it?s just that the reduced size image sensor of the digital looks like it yields about 1.5x more magnification when printed to your usual size, ie it appears to be about 1.5:1 macro, you have to focus the lens a bit differently to get exactly the same image coverage as film.

No matter what camera and what lens arrangement you have, the distance of the lens front to a nervous insect needs to be maybe 100mm or greater. This is where the screw-in close-up lens works well with lenses of 200mm to 300mm focal length or the digital lens with that 35mm focal length equivalent ? you end up with an enormous working distance between the front of the lens and the subject. Nikon, Canon and Hoya make a selection of the good double element close-up lenses in various filter threads and dioptre strengths, but they are harder to find than plain lenses. This is definitely the easiest way to start with close-up and macro, whether it is film or digital.