Macro lens
About macro lens
Macro and Short Mount Lenses
Macro Photography (Extreme Close-Up) Basics
- Choose a medium telephoto (about 90-180mm) macro lens. A comfortable working distance (distance
between the front end of the lens to the subject) gives you the necessary room for lighting and other gadgets that you may need for extreme close-up photography. - Get yourself a sturdy tripod to eliminate possible camera shake during long exposures which is common in close-up photography. High magnification also increases the effect of camera shake.
- Carefully choose your camera position. Do not cast your own or the camera's shadow on the subjects.
- Switch to manual focus. Autofocus often does not work well in extreme close-ups that are half life- to
full life-size shots. Focus on the middle area of the subject and stop down the lens aperture as much as the light allows. This will give you the most depth-of-field possible (zone in front and behind the subject that is in sharp focus). - Bracket your exposure in half-stop increments under and over exposed.
Macro Lenses
Close-up Lenses
Coseup and macro photography Entomologists
Close-up lenses (also called supplementary lenses) screw into the filter mount on the front of the lens that is fitted to your camera, and bring the focusing range of the camera's lens closer to the camera. The power of close-up lenses is normally specified in dioptres; higher numbers are more powerful. With the camera's lens focused on infinity and a +1 dioptre close-up lens fitted, the maximum focusing distance becomes 1 metre, with a +2 it becomes 0.5 metres, and with a +4 it becomes 0.25 metres.
Close-up lenses for 35 mm cameras are commonly available with strengths of +1, +2, +3 and +4, but intermediate and higher strengths are also available. The lenses of digital cameras have shorter focal lengths than those for 35 mm cameras, and so they need stronger close-up lenses such as +7 and +10; these are often of too small a diameter and insufficient quality to be used on 35 mm cameras.
Close-up lenses are not usually corrected for optical aberrations, so you need to stop down the camera lens to at least f/8. The effects on image quality are greater with camera lenses of longer focal length, so better quality (and much more expensive) close-up lenses are needed for telephoto lenses and for roll-film cameras. Two-element achromatic close-up lenses are available: Nikon produce +1.5 and +2.9, Canon produce +2 and +4, and Hoya produce +10. Specially-matched close-up lenses are available for some macro lenses and medical lenses.
You can use two close-up lenses at a time, with the stronger one closer to the camera lens. The effect is additive, so a combination of a +1 and a +2 has the same power as a +3 close-up lens. Combining close-up lenses makes the drop in quality worse.
More about macro
More about macro
When you buy a camera, consider that you're buying in to a lens system. Your camera's lens mount determines what lenses you can use, and that camera brand's lenses will be dependent on whether or not the camera brand changes its lens mount. Nikon has not changed its lens mount since 1959 and it is well known in the industry for great lenses with very good glass formulas. You won't have problems finding lenses in the future.
Best FILM camera for amateur, photography classes: Nikon N80 with the Nikkor 28-105mm f/3.5-5.6D lens (also a macro lens) or the Nikkor 35-105mm f/3.5-5.6D(macro) lens. This camera has many features that you will not outgrow anytime soon; it has spot meter, average/center-weighted metering and 3D matrix metering, can be used totally manually (you set the aperture, shutter speed) with auto-focus or without auto-focus, or aperture priority (you set the desired aperture, the camera sets the correct, corresponding shutter speed) or shutter priority (you set the desired shutter speed, the camera will set the correct, corresponding aperture) or totally automatic where the camera will set the aperture and shutter speed with auto-focus or if you wish, without the auto-focus. The camera is the best bang-for-your-dollar on this level, and it also has a built-in flash good up to about 5 feet. It is a sturdy, ergonomically built camera, will advance your film automatically and rewind the film as you take the last shot, and it sets the ISO automatically for you (although you can also override to "push" or "pull" film), it has on-command grid lines to help you maintain a level horizon when you do landscapes, seascapes and architectural photos. It is the poor man's "pro" camera. Get the instructions manual; there are many more features that I do not have the time or space to include here.
Once you have the film processed, you can either scan the images at home (if you have a scanner at home) or you can have a CD made by the lab that processes your film. You'll the have the film for future use, and not have to worry about archival issues, still not unsettled in the digital technology.
Point and shoot camera: check into the Canon S3-iS. It does not have interchangeable lens but it has many good features considering its price range.
If you need to go to greater magnifications than 1:1, there are several options available. There are "macrophoto" lenses that will go to 5x (but aren't good at distances over a few feet). Alternately, you can add multipliers and/or extenders to your macro lens. Even better is to use a bellows unit, which is a sort of variable extension tube that can give you any amount of extension you need. Bellows units are tricky to use in the field, however.
How Close-up Is It?
Since, in principle, you can take any negative and blow it up as large as you want, aside from resolution problems, there is really no limit on how large an image you can make from any photo. But you can't change the size of the negative, and the area on the negative (or the CCD, in the case of a digital camera) that your subject covers determines how good a print you can make.
Thus, the best way to determine how good a close-up you've taken is to measure the actual object you've taken a photo of, and measure how big that object is on the negative or slide. If they are exactly the same size, we say that the magnification is 1:1 (read this as "one to one"). In other words, the image on the negative is exactly as big as the object itself was.
For 35mm film, this means that an object that's 36mm long (about an inch and a half) would completely fill a negative or slide in the widest direction.
If you don't do quite that well, and your image on the slide is only half as big as the original object, the magnification is 1:2. If you do exceptionally well, and the image on the slide is twice as big as the original object, you got 2:1 magnification. 1:1 magnification (also called "life-sized") is pretty good. Anything with magnification of about 1:2 or more is often called macro photography.
Best digital SLR for amateur or photography classes: Nikon D50 with the kit lens, which I would recommend over the Canon S3-iS since there's not much difference in prices and there is so much more camera in the Nikon D50; or, the Nikon D70S with the kit lens; this camera is still going strong and people are still raving over its many good qualities. With these Nikon cameras, you'll have a camera that will retain a higher resale price than any other when you decide to upgrade to another camera, and the lenses will surely fit any other Nikon digital camera!
Check with www.keh.com and see what they have; if you don't see what you want, go back in 2 or 3 days and be ready to buy at once since their merchandise doesn't stay very long on their shelves
Most Useful Lenses for Biological Imaging
So you are just starting out - what lenses should you get? As I said before, personally I like to make sure I have a good macro lens, a good telephoto, and wide-angle and "normal" zoom lenses. Then, build from there depending on your interests. I have put together a buying program for the typical, money-limited college student just getting serious about photography. You can go to that link from here:
CLOSE-UP PHOTOGRAPHY IS AS EASY AS....
- Mounting an autofocus, tele-macro lens on your D-SLR (single-lens reflex) camera;
- Mounting your camera on a tripod for stability;
- Loading a media card;
- Framing a favorite subject in the viewfinder and pressing the shutter release button
ONE STEP FURTHER
- Set your camera on Aperture Preferred mode to make photograph sharp (by stopping down lens to a
small aperture) or to blur background (by opening aperture ring to a larger aperture). - Use a reflector board to bounce light onto subject and soften harsh shadows.
- Use an electronic flash to eliminate shadows and brighten highlights.
Pro-Tip
- Place a piece of colored paper behind a flower to let the flower stand out in the picture.Colored paper
also eliminates a busy background of unattractive branches, etc. Support the paper with a couple of sticks securely planted in soil behind the flowers. - Place water drops on leaves with a spray bottle to give flowers the look of early morning dew.
- Do not take any flower pictures aimlessly. Pick one flower and concentrate on photographing it.