Tutorial: How to do macros without a macro lens
Okay, since some of you seem to be under the impression that macros can only be taken with macro lenses, here's my quick how-to on how you can still take macros without needing one.
At minimum, all you need is:
1) a lens
2) a camera
I've taken some quick photos to demonstrate how little you'll actually need and how much magnification you'll be able to pull off. You'll have to excuse the sloppiness of the photos -- they were taken just as examples and comparisons. Note, all these photos have not been edited or sharpened. They've all just been resized and renamed. They were photographed in jpg on the smallest resolution with in-camera sharpening off.
All these photos are uncropped.
As a benchmark, here's a $5 bill taped onto a board and shot with the 50mm at minimum focus:
Lens reversal
The easiest, and cheapest way for crazy macro: remove your lens and hand hold it backwards.
Here's the 50mm in reverse:
Even more magnification is the 35mm in reverse:
The wider the focal length you shoot in reverse, the more magnification you will get. Of course, this also means the less working distance you'll have and light becomes more difficult to work with since you're pretty much on top of whatever you're shooting. This technique is really suitable for lenses that fall between the 20-50mm range, which sounds almost like a kit lens! No macro lens necessary
You can also do macros by mounting a lens and hand holding another lens in reverse in front of that.
Here's an example of the 85mm mounted on the camera with the 50mm hand held in reverse in front of it:
As you can see, this isn't as desirable since vignetting is very much apparent. However, the longer the focal length the mounted lens is, the least apparent the vignetting is, so this is more suitable if you have a telephoto already. Again, you can buy reverse rings to hold a lens in reverse of another lens for you.
The photos I took were with the lens wide open. DOF is extremely shallow when shooting macros, so stopping down definitely helps. If you cannot manually stop down the aperture of the lens, the trick is:
- mount your lens onto the camera
- set your desired aperture
- press DOF preview
- and while holding DOF preview, unmount your lens
Extension tubes
A more common way to take macros without using a macro lens is with extension tubes. All these really are are just metal or plastic rings that increase the distance between your lens and your film/sensor plane. This method doesn't actually magnify your image, but rather reduces the minimum focusing distance of your lens. The further your lens is from your camera, the closer the minimum focusing distance. This typically works best with focal lengths 20-50mm as well (but not limited to).
50mm with 12/20/36mm extension tubes:
35mm with 12/20/36mm extension tubes:
Of course, the more extension tubes you use, the less light you're getting to your film/sensor, so you'll have to compensate for that as well.
Some benefits of having extension tubes are:
1) most modern extension tubes have electronic connections, so your camera can still communicate with the lens (ie: aperture, autofocus, metering).
2) Having a set in your camera bag can come in handy, especially if you find yourself doing product shots. Even using the 12mm extension tube with a 50mm lens can be suitable for these types of situations -- not extreme macro, but it makes the lens focus a lot closer than it normally does.
Using bellows follows the same idea.
Close-up lenses
Sometimes these are also referred to as diopters, close up filters, macro filters, etc.... For all intents purposes, it really is just a magnifying lens that screws into your filter threads.
Since it is another glass element the light is going through, technically there might be some image degradation, however if you stick to quality glass, like ones made by Canon or Nikon, any image loss would be negligible. If you're not anal about the sharpiest, sharp corners and what not, you can find decent ones on ebay for like $10-20.
However, the real benefit of using this is there isn't the loss of light you would get by using extension tubes or reversing your lenses, so you can use the same shutter speeds you normally would be using. Also you get a LOT more working distance, which is useful if you're photographing things like bugs that scare away easily.
The $5 bill at 85mm by itself:
The same bill with the 85mm and close-up lens at the same working distance with the same shutter speed:
This typically works best with longer focal lengths, 85mm and up.
Note that when you're doing macros, you really shouldn't be using autofocusing anyways. With the minimum amount of light and extremely shallow depth of field, your lens may hunt a lot and it'll make whatever you're shooting difficult to photograph. Put your lens in manual focus, set it to infinity for the most working distance, and gradually close in until you're in focus.
Anyways, that should give you guys some ideas. I'm expecting some cool stuff this month. Have at 'er!
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