z Many photographers today want to know how to take macro pictures, thanks to a growing number of beautiful images online of small plants, animals, and insects. Macro photography is not always easy, especially for beginners, but it is one of the most rewarding genres of photography you can do. With the right skills, you will be able to capture amazing images even in your own backyard. To learn macro photography from start to finish, you should begin by reading the tips and techniques in this guide, taught by an award-winning macro photographer exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. By the end, you will know exactly how to put these recommendations into practice and capture stunning macro photographs for yourself.
What Is Macro Photography?
Macro photography is close-up photography of small subjects, including things like bugs and flowers. You can take macro pictures in a studio or outdoor environment so long as you are magnifying your subject sufficiently.
Officially, you may hear that macro photography only happens when you take pictures of small subjects with a magnification of “life size” or greater. I will cover more about the meaning of magnification and life-size in a moment, but essentially it means that you must take pictures where your subject is the same size as your camera sensor or smaller, and it fills the frame. (So, if your camera sensor is one inch wide, you would be photographing something 1 inch or smaller.)
That is a very strict definition, and frequently you will hear photographers call an image “macro” even when it shows a slightly larger subject. The same is true of the photos in this article, many of which do not fit this technical definition, but they are close-up photographs nevertheless.
Introducing Macro Photography for Beginners
How do you take macro photos? Here are the most important steps:
- Understand macro photography terminology.
- Pick the right camera and lens equipment.
- Get enough depth of field.
- Pick camera and flash settings for a well-lit photo.
- Focus on the most important part of your subject.
- Learn the common behaviors of various insects.
- Compose and take your picture.
Some of these are harder to do than you might think, such as getting enough depth of field and focusing on the most important part of your subject. However, the tips in the rest of this macro photography tutorial will give you a good idea of where to begin, and you should be able to master everything with a bit of practice.
Best DSLR for Macro: Canon vs Nikon
For almost all genres of photography, Canon and Nikon (and Sony, and others) are so close in quality that arguments about which is “better” are, at best, extremely picky. Sure, there are differences, but it is rare that any system has a flaw that is fatal for the typical user.
As far as macro photography, this is still true, but you do need to keep some extra considerations in mind. Canon cameras in particular do not calculate apeture in the same way that cameras from other brands do. Specifically, when you shoot at high magnifications like 1:1, the Canon cameras will read your aperture value incorrectly. It might say f/11, when everything about the photo (diffaraction, depth of field, and expouser included) acts as if you’re shooting at f/22.
That is because aperture, on any lens, starts to do unexpected things at such high magnifications. In short, when your aperture is physically one size, it acts like another. Nikon, Sony, and other manufacturers all tell you the “functionally correct” aperture (f/22 in this case), while Canon does not. So, you need to keep that in mind when you shoot Canon cameras. This is far from an impossible drawback to overcome, but it is important to know about. The more frequently you change magnifications, the more of a problem this is.
