Close Up Photography

This is the first in a series of four lessons on close-up and macro photography by Andrew S Gibson, author of Up Close: A Guide to Macro & Close Up Photography.

Macro and close-up photography can seem complex and intimidating when you don’t know much about the techniques or equipment used.

The good news is that close-up photography techniques are straightforward to learn, and it doesn’t have to be expensive either. All it takes is for someone to guide you through the accessories and methods that photographers use to get up close to their subject.

While macro lenses undoubtedly give you the best image quality (I’ll cover macro lenses in detail in a later lesson) not everybody wants to, or has the budget, to buy one. So first I’m going to explore some relatively inexpensive ways to try out close-up and macro photography.

First a couple of definitions

Macro photography: This is when the subject is the same size, or smaller than, your camera’s sensor. This results in what is called 1:1 or life-sized reproduction. The best way to obtain this level of magnification is with a macro lens, although you may also be able to do it with extension tubes or a reversed lens (covered in upcoming articles).

Close-up photography: I define close-up photography as taking photos using an accessory that allows your lens to focus more closely to the subject than it otherwise would. It’s getting close to your subject, but not as close as you can with a macro lens.

For me, this is the area where the most exciting images are to be made. You can create exciting close-up images of flowers, portraits and detail. You are close enough to create dramatic images, but not so close that you run into problems created by lack of depth-of-field.

My favourite accessory for getting up close is a close-up lens (the Canon 500D close-up lens is pictured above). A close-up lens, while technically a lens, looks more like a filter and screws into the front of your lens the same way. For this reason they are also called close-up filters or supplementary filters.

Close-up lenses work by reducing the minimum focusing distance of your lens. You can focus more closely to your subject, which gives you greater magnification.

There are two types of close-up lens:

1. Single element close-up lens

You’ll see these for sale in camera stores and on Amazon or eBay, sometimes for rock bottom prices. They may come in sets, allowing you can combine the lenses for greater magnification.

Single element close-up lenses are built with one optical element. This keeps the price down and they are ideal if you’re on a budget. However the image quality isn’t great. They suffer from lack of edge sharpness and chromatic aberrations. These are more pronounced at wide apertures.

2. Double element close-up lenses

Double element (sometimes called dual-element or achromatic close-up lenses) close-up lenses contain two elements. The second element corrects the aberrations of the first, resulting in excellent image quality across the frame and minimal chromatic aberration.

The 500D close-up lens pictured earlier is a double element close-up lens.

The only downside of double element close-up lenses is the price and availability. While cheaper than buying a macro lens, they can be considerably more expensive than single element close-up lenses.

Canon is the only major camera manufacturer producing double element close-up lenses. The 250D (+4 diopter) and 500D (+2 diopter) are available, although probably not off the shelf in your local camera store. You will have to order them.

Just like filters, they can be used with any brand of camera, the important thing is to make sure you buy the right size to match the filter thread on your lens.

Nikon used to make close-up lenses, but they have been discontinued. You may still be able to buy them second-hand.

Raynox makes triple-element close-up lenses that come with a snap-on mount that you can use to attach them to lenses with filter threads from 52 to 67mm. I haven’t used one, but the reviews are good and they are surprisingly inexpensive considering the image quality you should get from them.

Using close-up lenses

Using a close-up lens is easy. Just screw it into the front of your lens and your camera will take care of exposure and auto-focus (at higher magnifications it may be easier to switch the lens to manual focus).

For maximum magnification, use manual focus and set the lens to its minimum focusing distance. Move the camera closer to the subject until it’s in focus.

Close-up lenses work better with telephoto lenses than shorter focal lengths. The longer the focal length of your lens, the more magnification you will gain by attaching a close-up filter (Canon makes the 500D close-up lens in 72mm and 77mm sizes to match the filter threads of its telephoto lenses).

I like using my close-up lens for the following types of subject:

Portraits – if I want to get really close to my subject, I just put a close-up lens on my 85mm lens. This lets me get really close, yet, as I’m using a short telephoto, not so close that I make my sitter feel awkward.

Flowers – flowers look amazing in close-up. I’ve spent a lot of happy hours in Auckland’s Winter Gardens, and Kew Gardens in London, photographing the beautiful flowers displayed there.

Details – details are a great way of capturing the atmosphere of a place when you’re travelling. A close-up lens lets you get up close and concentrate on the little things that evoke the atmosphere of your location.

It’s not an area I’ve dabbled in much, but close-up lenses are also great for food photography.

In the next lesson I’ll take a look at extension tubes, how to use them and which ones to buy.

This is the second in a series of four lessons on close-up and macro photography by Andrew S Gibson, author of Up Close: A Guide to Macro & Close Up Photography.

In the last lesson, I wrote about close-up lenses and how they can help you get closer to the subject for close-up photography. This time, I’m going to write about another accessory you can buy, extension tubes.

Extension is the term used to describe the distance that the front element of your lens can be moved forwards. The further forward the element, the closer your lens can focus to your subject.

Extension tubes work by increasing the extension of your lenses. An extension tube is a hollow, light-tight tube that fits between your lens and your camera mount. It moves your lens further from the camera, and the front element closer to the subject. The closer you can focus, the more magnification you get.

The above photo shows a 50mm lens fitted with a 25mm extension tube.

Extension tubes, generally speaking (it depends on the lens) get you closer to your subject than close-up lenses, in some closes nearly as close as you would be able to get with a macro lens.

There are two types of extension tube that you can buy:

The first, and the least expensive, don’t maintain the electrical connection between your lens and camera body.

The camera can still handle exposure – just set it to aperture priority or program mode.

The biggest drawback of these extension tubes is aperture control. If your lenses don’t have manual aperture rings (ie the aperture setting is controlled by the camera) then the lens aperture will remain locked open at the widest aperture. While wide apertures can be used creatively, the narrow depth-of-field you get with close-up photography means that you usually need to stop down to get a large enough zone of sharpness to suit the image.

However, if you have a lens with a manual aperture ring, this may not matter too much, as you can stop down manually (although the viewfinder will get darker as you do so, making it hard to see at small apertures).

The second type of extension tube is one with electrical contacts that maintains communication between the lens and camera body. The camera controls the aperture settings, and you can use any automatic exposure mode and also autofocus (although it is often easier to focus manually when you’re working close-up).

These are the Canon EF25 and EF12 extension tubes (now discontinued and replaced with the EF25 II and EF12 II tubes). You can see the electrical contacts in the extension tubes.

You will find plenty of inexpensive extension tubes if you search on Amazon or eBay, and they are fine if you are on a tight budget or just want to play. But if you can, you should buy the second type of extension tube, which is one that maintains the electrical connection between the lens and the camera body.

Nikon, Canon and Olympus make extension tubes for their cameras. Sony doesn’t, but you can buy them from third party manufacturers like Kenko and Vivitar, who also make extension tubes for Canon and Nikon. These tubes are all of the second variety.

Pentax is the odd man out here – the only extension tubes I could find for sale online were more expensive than a Pentax macro lens (I don’t know why). But if you’re a Pentax user, you can buy the first type of extension tube I mentioned easily enough, as long as you’re willing to work within the limitation of losing the lens to camera electrical connection.

Extension tubes work best with lenses of short to medium focal lengths. They are less effective with telephoto lenses.

This is the opposite way around to close-up lenses (see my first article here), which work better with telephoto lenses. The focal length of the lens you intend to use for your close-up work may determine which is the best accessory to buy.

An advantage of extension tubes is that you can use them with any of your lenses. If you buy a set, you can join two extension tubes together to give you even more magnification.

The only disadvantage of extension tubes is that there is some light loss. Adding an extension tube increases the effective aperture of the camera lens, which means you need to use either a longer shutter speed or higher ISO to compensate for the loss of light. Your camera, if it’s set to an automatic exposure mode, will take care of this automatically for you.

Using extension tubes

The best way to use extension tubes is to set the lens to manual focus. You can use the manual focusing ring on your lens to focus on the subject.

Depth-of-field is very narrow this close up. Don’t be afraid to raise your ISO in order to get a small enough aperture to give you adequate depth-of-field. If your subject is still, you can use a tripod – this will let you use a low ISO to maximise image quality and eliminate camera shake.

If you are hand-holding the camera, you may need to use a faster shutter speed than normal to obtain a sharp image. The extra magnification also magnifies camera shake as well as the subject. Shutter speeds of 1/250 second or more are ideal.

What sort of thing can you take photos of with extension tubes? I like to use them for taking photos of flowers. I also had a lot of fun taking photos of my girlfriend’s eye (the opening image to the article). It’s a good illustration of how close you can get if you stack enough extension tubes together.

This is the third in a series of four lessons on close-up and macro photography by Andrew S Gibson, author of Up Close: A Guide to Macro & Close Up Photography.

In my previous articles I looked at two easy techniques for getting closer to your subject – using close-up lenses and extension tubes (you can catch up on them here and here).

In this lesson I’m going to take a look at a technique you can use to get even closer – reverse lens macro.

If you already own a 50mm prime or standard kit lens (around 18-55mm focal length range) then reverse lens macro is also the least expensive way there is to get up close.

The reverse lens technique involves turning the lens around so that the rear element points outwards, and the front element faces the camera body. You can buy special adapters to attach the reversed lens to either your camera body or another lens.

If you haven’t seen this in action before, it may seem like bit of a strange thing to do. But it works. The above diagram shows why. In normal use, a 50mm lens focuses light from far away so that the image is much smaller and can be recorded by a digital sensor or on film.

Reverse the lens and the opposite occurs. The 50mm lens magnifies what it sees, giving near life-size reproduction.

There are two ways you can use the reverse lens technique:

1. Single lens reverse macro

Use a reversing ring (illustrated above) to attach your reversed lens to your camera. You can buy these adapters inexpensively from Amazon or eBay. One side screws into the end of your lens like a filter, the other attaches to your camera’s lens mount.

The photo above shows how it works.

This technique works well if you have a lens with a manual aperture ring. Depth-of-field decreases as you get closer to your subject, and at the high magnifications obtained by reversing a 50mm lens, you need to stop down to increase the zone of sharpness.

If your reversed lens doesn’t have a manual aperture ring, you can’t stop down and are forced to work at the maximum aperture of your lens. However, don’t let this stop you trying out this technique – take a look at the work of Roni, who uses a reversed 50mm lens at its widest aperture, to take some beautiful photos.

2. Twin lens reverse macro

Use a coupling ring (shown above) to attach your reversed lens to another lens. The reversed lens acts like a powerful close-up filter (I covered close-up filters in more depth here).

A reversed 50mm lens has a strength of +20 diopters. A reversed 24mm lens has a strength of +41.6 diopter. Considering the most powerful close-up lens I know of has a strength of +10 diopter, you can see how powerful this technique is.

The above photo shows how I use this technique. I attach a reversed 50mm lens to my 85mm prime lens. In this set-up, the 85mm lens is called the primary lens and the reversed lens the secondary lens.

You can try this with any lens as the primary lens. The longer the focal length, the more magnification you’ll achieve. The important thing is that the filter thread sizes match, or are close to each other, so you buy a coupling ring that will join them together. You have the option of using a coupling ring combined with a stepping ring if you need to.

The advantage of twin lens reverse macro is that you can leave the reversed lens open at its widest aperture. You stop down the primary lens instead to increase depth-of-field.

Depending on the lens that you attach the reversed lens to, you can achieve up to 3x life-size reproduction. That’s three times as close as most macro lenses.

Caring for the reversed lens

The reversed lens technique does leave the rear element of your reversed lens open to the elements. You should always take care with the reversed lens to avoid scratching the exposed element.

If you have an extension tube, you can attach it to the reversed lens (see photo above). This helps protect the rear element and also acts as a lens hood.

Image sharpness

The reversed lens technique gets you so close to the subject that it’s virtually impossible to hand-hold the camera. For best results, use a tripod to keep the camera steady, and a cable release to fire the shutter.

I find it best to use this set-up indoors, especially for delicate subjects like flowers. If you try it outside, the slightest breeze will move the flower and spoil the photo.

For best results (in terms of image sharpness) stop down the primary lens to at least f4. This increases the depth-of-field and also avoids softening of the image that can happen when you use the twin lens reverse macro technique with the primary lens at it’s widest aperture settings.

Lighting

You can use natural light to illuminate your subject, as long as you don’t mind using a tripod and long shutter speeds to obtain the required exposure.

You can also use flash. You don’t need a specialised macro flash – I use a Canon Speedlite with a small softbox. That’s all I used to take the above photo. The diagram shows the set-up.

Kit lenses

I’ve used a 50mm prime lens to illustrate this article, but don’t forget you can try this out with just about any lens, although 50mm seems to be the ideal focal length. Kit lenses like the Canon EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS II pictured above work great.