Macro Photography Tips

Female: Welcome back, we’re now gonna take a look at some of Leslie’s photos that you took earlier outside on the grass. And I wonder whether you could offer some advise, tips, and also, you know, for the people watching back at home, some, you know, helpful hints of what not to do and how to get a good shot. Leslie: Okay sure. Well, the first image that we’re looking at here. She’s got the composition pretty good on it. Female: Yeah. Leslie: The problem that we, the main problem that with this image is the camera shake on it. Female: Right. Leslie: She was using a shutter, she was using a very small aperture. So the shutter speed was quite long… Female: Okay. Leslie: …and so it hasn’t been able to get a shot without a little bit of camera shake. And she can solve this by just opening up the aperture a bit and that would have bought her shot shutter speed faster… Female: Yup. Leslie: …to allow her to do that. The other problem we’ve got with this image is there’s a, I think you can see is like a blade of grass. Female: Yeah. Leslie: That’s just out of focus in front of the shot. Female: Just spoils it isn’t it. Leslie: Just slightly spoils it. It’s a bit of a shame. So, I mean the thing is with macros is if you take your time and you can move aside any things or change your angle and that would give a much better, a much better situation, you know… Female: That’s right. Leslie: … you can take more time over and stuff. If we maybe move on to the second shot. Female: Yeah. Leslie: Yeah, now, that again, you know, the composition would be okay on that and the only problem is, is that, obviously she’s, she’s have it on the auto focus and the auto focus has picked up on the grass and not the actual flowers. Female: Rather than the daisies. Leslie: And probably because she’s trying to frame it differently and, and, you know the grass is in the center of the frame and not the, not the flowers. And obviously that’s simple to create, you know, the more time you spend on it, you can, you can really check, you know, you can spend time checking your auto focus and stuff. Obviously with the digital SLR, it’s lot easier to sort out that problem, coz you probably use it in manual focus anyway where in she’s using an auto. Female: An auto. Yeah. Leslie: But you know, it’s very, it’s a very easy problem to, to rectify and you know shouldn’t find, you know with a bit of experimentation, you shouldn’t find much really problem. Female: Okay, so let’s take a look at the third image. Leslie: Okay, with this third one, we can see a marked improvement with this. Female: Yeah. Leslie: Obviously she’s got rid of the camera shake. The flower’s in focus and the exposure is bang on really. The other good thing about it obviously, you know, we’re on location so the grass looks really good on the background. Female: Yes. Leslie: It’s certainly blurred and stuff. I think it’s, I think it’s already good. I think she’s done really well to get that. Female: It’s artistic isn’t it and great. Leslie: Yeah, you know, the, the composition is really nice and, I mean obviously, you could go with the, the two thirds roll and stuffs like that. But I think, I think, you know, when you’re doing macro work, it’s quite interesting to get, to get the flower all in shot and obviously when you’re beginner, that’s your main focus. Not trying to get too creative with the composition and stuff. So, I think she’s done really well for the time that she’s had to learn and stuff. Female: Okay, so for the people back at home that wants some top tips on macro photography, what can you give them? Leslie: Okay, well there’s a couple of main things to think about. Obviously you need to make sure that your camera is very steady and you’re not gonna get camera shake. So obviously when you, when you’re indoors that might mean using the tripod. Outdoors, it might be more about steadying your subject if it’s windy or something like that. The next thing is obviously, you know, make sure your white balance is consistent so if in doubt use the settings on the camera where you can always custom white balance. And the other main thing is just make sure that you, you make sure that your focus is right, you know, obviously, with macro it’s very important to get your focus right. Because the depth to field is always so narrow that you really, really need to make sure that you can really fine tune that focus. Female: Not only probably in the manual setting rather than automatic. Leslie: Yeah, if you got it on your camera, that’s, that’s an ideal situation. Female: Fantastic. And can you use any subject. I mean we’ve look at flowers today, but can you use things around the house, objects… Leslie: Yeah, I mean, I mean, you know, we’ve picked a flower, but you could’ve, you could’ve take a photo of a grain of the table here, you know, you could have a salt and pepper pot, you know. Any household object you can think of looks really unusual from a very close angle and that’s when macro comes in, that’s why people do macro photography. And that’s where it comes in to its own. When you can get really interesting shots of items that you wouldn’t normally see that close. Female: Yes, taking it out of context and making a brand new picture. Leslie: Definitely.