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Macro Photography
Let's combine what we've learned until now: the aquarium
Combining everything we've learned up to this point, let's look at a case study: the aquarium. The items inside are pretty close, so you
need a macro lens. If you put a rubber lens hood on the front of the lens, then you can mush it up against the glass and avoid reflections.
Now you need light. Well, you can just get a flash on an extension cord and point it into the aquarium from just about anywhere.
Here are some examples from the public aquarium in Monterey, taken with a Nikon 8008, 60mm AF macro lens (set for manual focus),
SB-24 flash, SC-17 extension cord. I wiped the glass with a handkerchief, asked my friend to hold the flash, and pushed the lens hood
up against the glass:
I'm still trying to figure out how I managed to get a lawyer in that last frame...
Focus
With a depth of field of around one millimeter for precise macro work, camera positioning and focus become critical. If you have a
good tripod and head, you'll find that you have at least 10 controls to adjust. Each of them will move the camera. None of them will
move the camera along the axis that you care about.
That's why people buy macro focusing rails. These are little rack and pinions capable of moving the entire camera/lens assembly
forward and back. You use the tripod to roughly position the camera/lens and then the macro rail to do fine positioning.
I snapped the photos below in the garden of the Getty Center and, though I had a fancy Canon 180 macro lens, I didn't have a tripod. So
I couldn't focus precisely and couldn't stop down enough to get sufficient depth of field. The results are rather disappointing...
Beyond 1:1 the Canon Way
http://www.photo.net/macro/primer (5 of 8)15/11/2004 6:47:08 PM