Beginning Photography Tips

Simple Guide to Macro Photography

This is a quick tutorial to get you started with high speed photography. It includes great beginning photography tips for those wanting to learn more about macro photography. There are tons of other resources on the web, but most of them are advanced and require special equipment.

This tutorial focuses on macro water droplet photographs, but you could apply the techniques to any macro high speed photography. To get the effects that are shown in this tutorial, you’ll need an SLR camera (such as a Canon Digital Rebel), an external flash (check out my article on SLR cameras), and a lens with moderate macro capabilities. The kit 18-55 EFS lens should get you started but a real macro lens works a lot better. A tripod is very useful but is not essential.

Settings: The settings for the flash can be confusing. Setting the Flash on ETTL and Camera on P will work, but is limiting, so i’ll discuss a more flexible way to do it. I suggest setting the Flash to Manual Mode and setting the power to its lowest setting or so (1/64). This makes the flash fire a very brief burst of light, which freezes the action better. Set the camera to Av mode and select a medium F-stop value (5.0 or so). A higher F-stop will make the depth of focus bigger, and help keep subjects in focus.

Setup: The setup does NOT have to be glamorous (see image). Use a tripd to align your camera close to your subject, preferably keeping the subject parallel to the lens so that everything is in focus. You need to be close because the flash power is reduced. You can handhold the camera, but focusing can be difficult. Next, focus on your subject. If you are doing water drops the easiest way to do it is to turn the water up to a small stream (about the diameter of the drops you want) and focus on that. If you can’t do that then manually focus until the drops seem to twinkle a bit. Take a few test shots and make sure that the focus and lighting is okay. To adjust the brightness of the image, just increase of reduce the F-stop, or increase the ISO value (keep it below 800 to keep noise low).

When your test shots look crisp, focused, and the correct brightness, it’s time to compose the colors. Use colored items, anything non-reflective, a foot or so behind your subject. They should blur out because of the limited depth of field. Also, for water drops, add colored objects to the sides of the frame, they will show up in the water reflections. The image on the right shows my blue background (shopping bag) and out of shot colored object (red hat).

Now you’re ready to start shooting. It can be hard to time things correctly, so the best bet is to shoot rapid fire style. 50% of the shots will have nothing in them, but you can just delete them later. Keep shooting, changing the colored objects and composition of the shot. Take a bunch of shots and then download them and see them on your screen. This will let you know if the subject is really in focus and if you need to increase your depth of focus or reduce your ISO.

When you are taking macro shots like this, little things can make a big difference. For example the two shots on the right were taken under identical conditions and settings, but i added a yellow post-it note to the back of the glass to change the water color for the second one. The images below only differ in their backgrounds. I held the burst mode down as i passed different objects behind the subject.

Lastly, although the background is generally blurred by the shallow depth of focus, water drops can bring the background into focus. Placing interesting background objects and focusing correctly will allow some neat effects. See the globe effect in the image on the right.