Macro photography (and a couple of shots)

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*Be advised that I initially planned to just show a few photos on this post but it turned into a ‘tutorial’ type of a post. I love photography as a hobby and whatever written below are my experience with macro photography. If I incorrectly describe some of the information, please do correct me. Thanks*

Shooting macro basically means shooting very minute things. When this mode is active you will be able to focus up very very close to the subject and take photos of it. Done correctly and you might see details of your subject which you won’t be able to see with your naked eye. For the point and shoot camera, macro mode is often designated by the flower icon. You should switch to it and try to focus up close on certain subjects and notice the difference. For point and shoot cameras, the amount of macro you can actually do is limited when compared to the DSLR.

~Look for this icon~

For DSLR users, you can shoot subjects in macro mode using a kit lens however to fully appreciate what your DSLR can do in macro mode, you might want to get into some macro dedicated accessories.

First off, we have the macro lens. These lens can be used to shoot as normal but are capable of focusing very close to your subjects. The idea using macro lens is quite easy. Fit it onto the DSLR. Bump the aperture to at around f/16 to f/32. And focus (I would suggest manually) on your subject until you get the desired sharpness. It might also be handy to have a flashgun around since using such small apertures will limit the amount of light entering your camera. Adjust your shutter speed as required. And use a tripod if necessary.

One of the more popular macro lens in the market will be the Tamron 90mm f/2.8. In fact I have one with me everytime I go on any type of shoots because it can be used as an alternative portrait lens.

Next, for budget photographers, a macro conversion lens can be an alternative. These lens fit onto the front of the kit lens (but be aware of the filter size since it can cause vignette if improperly fitted. The upside to the macro conversion lens is that, its a lot cheaper compared to a dedicated macro lens and its also a lot lighter to carry it outside. However, since it is a fit-on lens, you should never use Auto focus (which I wouldn’t recommend as well even with a macro dedicated lens). The auto focus won’t be able to focus accurately because the macro conversion lens is fit on in front of the camera lens. If you’re new to macro photography, it might really take some time to get used to using a macro conversion lens. I have tried out the Raynox Macro conversion lens before and it really requires a bit of practice to get use to it. But when done correctly, you’ll be impressed.

Alternatively, there’s the reverse macro rings. These allow you to use the reverse side of your lens to take macro shots. Apply the adapter ring on your camera, apply your lens in reversed on the ring and shoot away. Of course, you won’t be able to use the auto focusing and you will have to adjust your distance (move forward and back) to get the desired focus. These will most probably be the cheapest alternative (I haven’t really tried these before though).

~This is a reverse ring~

Lastly, there’s the close-up filters. Fix it on like how you would fix on your UV filter and you have a pseudo macro effect. These filters have +numbers on them by which the higher the number, the better the closeup effect. The downside of this will be that the filter size are fixed, so if you gotten 52mm filter size closeup filters, you might not be able to use them on 67mm size lens without additional accessories.

~Close up filters~

All in all, to be good in macro photography, you will have to remember these few points.

1. Use a tripod if you have one. It might not be as flexible as you hope for it to be but it helps out a lot. Otherwise, use a fast enough shutter speed or bump up the ISO to compensate. When you are really close up to your subject, even the slightest move will cause blurriness.
2. Use a small aperture to get sharp and in-focus shots. When you’re focusing on something which is so minute, the depth of field plane changes as well. So if you were to use a large aperture (eg: f/2.8), the sharpness plane is so thin that you might not get the focused area entirely sharp. If you’re able to, use the depth of field preview button. If you don’t know what is that, its time to read up on that camera manual.
3. Use an external flashgun or ensure adequate lighting. While using such small aperture, you will definitely have a hard time getting your photo properly exposed. Adequate lighting will be key here.
4. As always, take more than one photo. Its better to have a lot of ‘under-par’ photos and one nice photo rather than one lousy photo.
5. Manual is better than auto. In macro photography, this is often true. Adjust the focus manually rather than to let the auto focus mechanism of the camera take over.
6. Have fun.

*Note: All photos (except those in the slideshow) are taken from their respected websites*

Fang Wen’s photoshoot (Malacca 7th-9th May 2010)

Thanks to the lovely Fang Wen for helping me out with my photography training. Definitely a good experience for me since my first one didn’t work out too well. I learnt a bit more during this shoot.

Here are some photos:

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Some of the night shots:

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And the best shots overall (I’m really loving these few)

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A few more things which I noticed was that

1. Its better to have the person interact with something else. Eg: at the beach perhaps playing with the sand etc. This gives the picture more of a story rather than the simple ‘pose and smile’
2. Don’t be worry to try out all sorts of different angles.
3. Remember to set the correct white balance. I played around with the wireless flash for a bit and forgot that my white balance was on auto. And the results was horrible. Luckily I tinkered around with the white balance and got white balance correct for the night shots.
4. Give your subject distance, take more than the face if possible. The body and its movement shows a lot of things.
5. It might be good to have someone distract the subject to get more natural shots.

Good luck in your shoots 🙂

My journey with Esme [My D90]

Warning: Newbie giving advices, so not all info might be right. Do correct me if I’m wrong.

It was 2 years of training with my semi-pro digital camera before I decided to make the transition to using a DSLR. The transition was because I found that there were still a lot of limitations on a digital camera and on the contrary of my experience in a digital camera, I haven’t had much practice on a DSLR before I got mine.

I remember when Esme first arrived. I spent a few hours reading through the manual, understanding only parts of it before I started my hands-on on it. And a lot of things really seemed new to me. It really takes a while to get used to it.

I gotten Esme late November 2009 mainly because I was planning to bring her to Taiwan with me during my trip. I remember experimenting with Esme a few days before the trip, among which I went to Putrajaya to take some night shots [Which mostly turn out horrible]. Some of the photos are shown below:

Horrible!!! [Quite underexposed]

One thing which I really couldn’t get used to then was using the viewfinder instead of the liveview. [FYI: viewfinder is where you look through with your eye to see what you are taking photo of, and liveview is what you find on most digital camera LCD screen where the image you want to take photo of is shown on the screen]. This caused quite a problem because I totally lost my ‘balance’ as in I couldn’t make my photos look balanced. It’s either leaning towards one side or the other.

The photo looked tilted here.

And that caused a lot of cropping to get the images balanced. Even now, I still do a lot of cropping especially when things like that happen.

After that I became a bit conscious about the lens smudges and dust off the lens every now and then. especially how much a single lens cost so I went to read up on how to take care of lens and gotten myself a UV filter to put on every time I’m near water or near the beach. I’ve even gotten myself a lenspen to ‘clean’ the lens when it’s necessary

Then a few days before I got to Taiwan, I gotten a circular polarizing lens (CPL) filter which helps in making the skies bluish especially when it looks boring. It also helps in reducing reflections which really came in handy especially when I was taking photos in the aquarium and by the seaside. The only problem with the filter was that it’s full potential can only be unleashed when the sun is at a proper direction. It also did help a bit while I was taking photo out of moving vehicles as it reduces the reflections from the glasses. I guess I might be using it as a tone down filter also if I’d want to make river flows seemed smooth especially on sunny days since CPL filters darkens the exposure by one or two stops. Some better photos from Taiwan [even better might not be too good]

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The following photos were taken with CPL filter on. Notice the lack of reflections from the glass

In the end, I did get quite a number of nice photos from Taiwan but my framing and composition was horrible at that moment. Not to mention that there’s still a number of things I still couldn’t understand. So after the trip, I started reading a number of books on composition and tips and tricks on taking photography. I would really recommend Petersen’s Photographic Digital Photo Guide which can be found in bookstores in Malaysia. There are currently 5 volumes of this magazine out and the guide really helps a lot in teaching you framing, composition, exposure, taking shots of nature, lenses etc etc. Do grab a copy if you find one at a bookstore near you. There’s also another 1-volume magazine which teaches on basic photography techniques and some post processing techniques called Ultimate Guide to Digital Photography, 3rd edition.

Source: Petersen’s Photographic Digital Photo Guide

Source

I was very much engrossed in reading up on photography for the next 2 months and while reading about that, I learned about the nifty fifty lens [50mm prime lens f/1.8] which was one of the cheaper lens which give good bokeh [Bokeh means how some lens can throw certain areas out of focus depending on where you are focusing at]. I’ve read about how potential this particular lens was and decided to give it a try. Bought it, and played around with it and learnt a lot of things after playing with it. Its so hard to get the focus right especially at f/1.8. Another thing which I failed to realize was how narrow 50mm was. Being a prime lens, you cannot change the zoom in it and so you’d have to adjust yourself and your subjects just to get a shot right [which frankly is what photographers should do]. And you’d have to stand very very far away if you want to take group photos. Very far away especially when the group was big. I found out about this while using it to take photos of the big large group during the CNY dinner. Failed photo below

I was standing quite far away when I took this photo and all I can see is still half of the people present. [Note to self: Don’t use 50mm prime lens to take group photos]

But the good thing about the 50mm prime is that with the proper settings you can get something like this:

Notice the bokeh

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The following shows just how powerful the depth of field of a 50mm prime lens can be at f/1.8

Focus on foreground…

and then

Focus on midground [the pillows] throw both the foreground and the background out of focus.

and finally

Focus on background [the plastic bags] throwing both the bottle and the pillows out of focus.

And with that, the possibilities are almost limitless. Imagine what a f/1.4 or an f/1.2 can do.

But it’s often very hard to get the focus right without proper practice. I’ve gotten spoilt photos because the focus was off. Imagine a photo with the eyes in focus but the nose out of focus.

Till now I’m still practicing with the 50mm prime lens.

After I gotten the lens, I decided to take back revenge on my failed first shoot at Putrajaya at night and gotten myself a tripod and this time with the proper knowledge, went for a Round 2 photo shoot session at night. Guess who won?

Sorry for the watermark but I really want to use it for some other purposes.

After that I noticed that at night it was hard to take photos of people at night so I invested in a hot shoe flash.

And I managed to overcome the darkness and played around with bounce flash [which is basically bouncing the flash off the walls to make more natural light and not use the flash directly on the subject] and filled flash [by which you flash in broad daylight to reduce the shadow effect produced by the unique features on the human face or by other things]. Also learnt to make a better bounce card as shown here.

I’ve learnt all this to prepare for the CSSUPM Annual Dinner by which I was one of the photographers. You can refer to this link to see the photos.

One of the nicer photos.

Even so, most of the photos are a bit overexposed since I was using Auto flash with the flash aimed at the ceiling, so it almost every-time gave out a full powered flash which overexposed the subjects. Will use manual controls to control the bounce flash power after this.

Also Joachim, a junior of mine who has more experience in the photography field also taught me about color balance, about how to maintain the proper color of what you saw. Very often we have seen photos taken under orange-ish light which cast a strong orange-ish color on the skin and this can be properly corrected by presetting color balance before taking the photo or do it during post processing. This became very useful and reading about this eventually lead me to learn about another feature in photography which is using spot metering. I really want to try some spot metering portraits soon especially shots that darken most of the face but keeps parts of it visible.

And finally I went for my virgin fireworks shoot with Esme by which a mistake on my part cost us better fireworks photos. But I will redeem myself in the next fireworks event I’m going to go to.

One of the nicer fireworks photo.

Thus is my journey so far with Esme, and I’ll be doing some more photo shoots with her to get more used to it.

Sometimes I get the feeling that, photography is not only a hobby, but a passion. 🙂

Get a DSLR only when…

I’ve heard a lot of people wishing to get a DSLR, mainly because

1. They think its cool to lug around a DSLR
2. They think that all the photos you take with a DSLR will be great photos
3. They think that they can just use the Auto settings on a DSLR and everything will turn out fine.
4. They are really photography enthusiasts who really learn a lot of things before settling down with a DSLR [And these are the people who knows how to read up on photography related topics etc]

If you are planning to spend for a DSLR and you are in category 1, 2, or 3, and NOT in category 4, then please do not waste your money on a DSLR.

On the contrary to what those in Category 1, 2 or 3 believe, it is not easy to use a DSLR. It’s heavy, the lens work funnily sometimes, focus is sometimes off when you’re using manual focus, some lens won’t work on certain DSLR, you might not get used to looking through the viewfinder [even though some DSLR have live-view function, I found that for the D90 there’s a slight delay in live-view which really spoils a lot of things], and most of all, you’ll need a lot of practice and read-ups to be good in using it [and that definitely means reading the manual- Only sadly I’ve seen very little friends of mine who owns a digital camera and still do not read the manual, till in the end, they didn’t know how much their digital camera can actually do].

Only consider a DSLR when you know what the following means and how each of them relate which each other.

• Exposure
• Shutter Speed
• ISO
• Aperture
• F-stop
• Spot, center weighted metering
• Macro
• Noise

If you don’t know any one of the above I would suggest for you to read up [go online and do a search on it]. Some camera’s manual settings will give you control [to an extent] on the above settings. You don’t need a DSLR to learn about the above.

Lets say for example, if you would want to take photos at night, what should you do. Turn on night mode and everything will be preset for you. But handshake might still remain a problem. How about using manual settings at night to take photos with natural lighting, what should you do? [Longer shutter speed possibly with a tripod, with high ISO to compensate so that you will be able to make things brighter- with higher noise of course, no flash unless absolutely necessary, low level of aperture perhaps f-stop of f/2.8, and pray that you’ll get a nice photo]

There are a lot of things one should learn before going for a DSLR, and moving along with the trend [by which more and more people are making the transition to DSLR] is NOT a good idea.

Please learn, unlock the full potential of your digital camera [if you have one], know its limitations, know its potential, know what you lack and find ways to compensate for it, and definitely read the manual if you have time.

Only after you’ve learn how to use the digital camera should you consider buying a DSLR. And when I say learn I don’t mean using Auto function and just snap away. Experience with the manual settings, play around and try new things. You’ll never know what your digital camera can do. I used my digital camera almost 3 quarters of a month, every month for 2 years [mostly in manual settings] before I got a DSLR. And honestly, it’s still hard to use the DSLR after all that practice.

So please, do some homework before buying so that you won’t blame the DSLR when all you get is lousy photos.

That being said, I will share my experience with Esme [My D90] soon. Perhaps you will be able to see what I’ve gone through with the DSLR. 🙂

PS: Correct me if I’m wrong with some of the info. I’m still learning as well