Macro photography: up close and personal
Macro photography is always seen as being too complicated for the average amateur. It is nothing of the sort. What you need most is a tripod. The rest is simply not very difficult.
Macro photography lets you get a new perspective on the beauty of nature. In the garden you are simply spoiled for choice. The subjects about. And if you are lucky you can even get a shot of a bee looking for food in a flower bed.
Most modern point-and-shoot cameras have the macro mode built in. And most people do not believe this when told. Please read the instructions before deciding it is not possible. It probably is.
Of course, if you are going to be serious about it as a hobby then you need a digital single lens reflex camera (D-SLR), which is designed for interchangeable lenses, including the general purpose macro series. If you go this route buy the longest macro lens you can afford because that way you get great pictures. But to do this you must be a very keen amateur.
Mostly you do not need to do that.
Check very carefully that your point and shoot camera does not already have that facility built in. It normally does.
The important bit is the tripod. You may have all sorts of anti-shake devices built-in to your camera but when it comes to macro hand-held shots are the exception rather than the rule. And for a beginner they simply are not an option.
The tripod — and make it a solid tripod that does not wobble if you break wind — is the most important accessory. It means that you get much sharper pictures for the solidity of the stand allows the camera to work with extreme exposures. And, at the same time, it allows you to frame the picture with more precision for once framed it is locked in place.
One seriously useful aspect of all this is you can use it to identify plants. I do not know what it is like in the United States but many plants that run rampant in Australia are unwelcome visitors.
One massive state, Queensland, was almost made uninhabitable by the cactus until someone found the cactoblastis beetle. It is illegal — as in you will be seriously fined — to have blackberry plants growing anywhere on your property. And so on.
Take a macro shot of the plant and take it to a botanist. And get ready for the bad news.
Yesterday the eucalypt tree in our back garden had a pretty little vine growing on it and the leaves started to take on a strange color. We took pictures, macro pictures, of the leaves and showed them to a botanist. Now the vine has been totally removed. The eucalypt looks a little bare but, we are assured, will recover.
Same thing with insects. Again it is impossible for an Australian to speak of the United States but we have creatures with nasty habits and you want them identified. For that macro is the answer.
(This has nothing to do with photography but it is about insects and truly happened. A very dangerous spider is the funnel web. It can kill young people and those who are pretty old. And it can make you very sick. On the radio a news announcer got it slightly wrong when he said, ‘Mrs Sheila Jones, a resident of Newcastle, New South Wales, is reported to be in a stable condition in the Newcastle hospital, after being admitted and treated after she was bitten on the funnel by a finger web spider.’ )
If you are doing it on an on and off basis that a good point-and-shoot camera which is compact and has a fixed lens will probably do the job for you. Plus. of course. the tripod and the stronger the better. Work on the basis that if it folds up very small it is not for you.
You will need a computer for downloading and editing images. What software you use for editing is immaterial. There is a lot of excellent free stuff out there. Any of it will be sufficient for your needs.
One trick which will require a small amount of planning is a series of shots of the changing seasons and the changing garden.
What you need is a spot where you can most accurately place the tripod. It has to go in exactly the same place every time. Then make sure you do not change the position of the top of the tripod.
Take one shot, if you like, every month although with some gardens every two weeks works out better. What you end up with is a slide show of your garden going through the seasons and, as well, being modified by your work and plantings. Magic.
It will also show you where the perennials are planted so that you do not dig them up to plant new annuals you have just bought from the nursery. It is also helpful to show which plants thrive where and how to build on your successes and prune out your failures.
Which is how we found out we can’t plant roses.
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