Photo Walk Friday: Get up Close!

There is something magical about seeing a subject up close and personal. This opens up a whole new world of options for you as a photographer. Close-up photography, or macro photography, can be a very rewarding form of photographic expression. The great thing about it is that you can do this from your basement at home, if necessary. Of course you can, and should, go outdoors too and setup shots in a forest or at the sea, but you can also setup shots of everyday subjects and shoot them up close.

To do some great close-up shots, you won’t need a macro lens. You can use almost any lens to make close-up images. Bear in mind that each lens has a minimum focusing distance. This can range from a few centimetres (1-3″) to half a meter (20″) depending on the lens. Telephoto lenses will have a longer minimum focusing distance, while medium range lenses (24-70mm) will have a closer focusing distance. The difference between macro lenses and non-macro lenses is that a macro lens has a much shorter focusing distance (30cm/1 foot or closer) in most cases.

Also, a macro lens has a magnification ratio of 1:1. What that means is that the lens can reproduce the subject onto the sensor at it’s actual life size. So if your subject is 20mm in size and it is captured as 20mm on the sensor, that means it has a 1 :1 ratio.  Some lenses can only reproduce a 1:2, or 1:3, ratio which means that the subject will be half the size or less, on the sensor, relative to the size of the subject. I would suggest that you try close-up photography with the range of lenses you have. See which one works best. Prime lenses are usually a good place to start as they have great clarity and sharpness. 

Experiment with different exposures, sometimes a slightly overexposed macro scene can look good, so play around with that. Above all, have some fun. Use it as an exercise in learning more about photography, and try and get some dynamic images too! In a future article, I will go into more details about settings and exposure modes. In the mean time, start shooting some close up images and let’s see how things look.