Transcript

Tyson Sugihara: Hey everybody. It’s Tyson Sugihara here, and welcome back to this week’s blog and podcast. This week we are going to talk about macro photography. I just picked up this crazy new lens—crazy and new for me. It’s the Canon MPE-65 Millimeter Macro, and it is a macro specialty lens. I’ve had other macro lenses in the past that could be used for a wide variety of things. I had one that was 100 millimeter. They call it a macro, but you could use it for portraiture photography as well, which is very popular amongst the macro lenses.

This one is specifically and purely for macro photography. The big thing here is that a lot of people confuse macro photography with close-up photography, and there are many lenses that allow you to do close-up photography. However, true macro (meaning giving you a 1:1 aspect ratio) is something that does require a little more specialty use in specialty features on the lens. This particular lens will go 1:1 to 5:1, and you can see the results that I’ve posted here, and that of course, will be on the screen right now. This is just my first couple of weeks with this lens, and I’ve got to tell you, honestly, I don’t know that it’s the first macro lens that I would suggest anybody purchase unless you know that’s exactly what you want to do, that’s all you want to do, and you’re willing to put in a lot of time, effort, frustration, and a lot of “insert expletive here” because this is a very challenging lens to use.

Let’s go through the reasons why, some of the cool things and what to expect if you’re going to purchase a lens like this.

Number one, like I said, it’s specifically for macro photography, and that’s all you’re going to be able to use it for. You’re going to be from one and a half inches to a maximum of four inches—that’s right, inches, I said—away from your subject. You have to be up close and personal. That can make it extremely difficult if you’re trying to go out in your backyard or in the woods and photograph a moving subject like an insect, or even if there’s a slight breeze blowing on the flower that you’re trying to shoot.

The focal point on this camera is extremely small. I was shocked at how small it is. I’m talking fractions of an inch. Millimeters can make the difference between a tack sharp focus and “What did I just take a picture of?” focus. That’s how sensitive this is. With that in mind, handheld is…I’m sure it can be done, but you’ll be extremely lucky if you get anything with a handheld shot. It will be take one hundred and maybe get one that’s in focus. That’s how sensitive this lens is, especially if you’re shooting at a smaller aperture. If you want to get down to that f/2.8 to even f/8 or f/11 with this lens, it’s crazy how small the focal plane is on this.

I’ve been shooting at f/16 and at f/16 , if you’re measuring 1:1, then you can take a typical light reading and go with that. However, if you’re going to be magnifying up to that 2, 3, 4, and 5 to 1 aspect ratio, you pretty much have to take whatever light you’re metering and times it by the number of magnification. So, where I want to shoot at f/16 to get the greatest depth of field, I have to meter for f/16 and basically times it by five, which for me, is using an 1100 watt ranger power pack just a few inches away from my subject at full power, and it sounds like lightning struck behind you. That’s how much light is required to use a lens like this in the field.

I’ve been using mine in the studio and trying to control the environment a little bit more, actually a lot more, because I am using insects that are no longer living. I am using walls to steady the subject if I’m shooting somebody’s eyeball. I am using a tripod, which I suggest that you use with any macro photography if you want to get the best results. We’ll go over a few more tips momentarily, but number one, with macro photography, a calm day if you’re shooting outside is going to be really important or otherwise you’re going to be taking a lot of shots. Number two, I definitely recommend that you have a sturdy tripod. Some of these cheap lightweight, “I take it with me because it’s lightweight and I can backpack with it” tripods, they’re probably not going to cut it because they’re going to shake a lot more than you’ll notice if you’re doing a portrait because you’re using so much magnification.

In addition to that, I have purchased a focusing rail. What that does is, especially with this lens because there isn’t a manual-focusing ring, the way that you focus this lens is by actually moving your entire camera forward or back. As you can see here, this focusing rail has micro-adjusting knobs that will move the entire camera system forward or back to bring you in or out of focus or left and right.

We’re going to use that similar to a tilt-shift lens where we can help to adjust that focusing plane, but a lot of it is going to be how you angle yourself with your subject, thinking ahead on that and really taking the time to compose your shop properly, or taking a lot of images of the same subject that’s totally still, and making micro-adjustments on your focus as you go, and then doing a technique called photo-stacking which essentially is either pulling it into Photoshop and manually finding all the sharpest parts of that image and stitching them together, or letting software help you, which of course, is going to be the way that I would recommend doing it for sanity’s sake.

So, let’s recap really quick here some of the basic gear that I would suggest: a powerful flash if you’re going to want the greatest depth of field. There are specialty macro-flashes, which we’ll talk about next week. And, if not, some type of a studio flash or strobe is going to be key, or handheld being able to trigger something like a speed light to get that light that you’re going to need. A very sturdy tripod is also something I would highly suggest to help eliminate a little bit of the frustration because there’s going to be a lot of frustration in this type of photography. A focusing slider, even if you have a lens that has a focusing ring. If you have a lens that auto-focuses, that may not be as critical, but it can definitely help, especially if you’re in a studio situation and you want to photo focus-stack those images. You’ll want to turn off that auto-focus and do those increments, so that slider can help in a situation like that.

A couple of the test shots that we have this week, number one is going to be the human eyeball. We did some with my eye and with Dani, who works here in the studio. Other clients have come through and asked if I could take a photograph of their eyeball and you can see some of the results here. Really cool looking that close into somebody’s eye. Some of the challenges, again, that we’re faced with, are again we need a lot of light to get that depth of field and we’re putting a strobe very close to their face. You can feel the heat when that thing pops in your face, and we’re shooting as much as we can with the light. If we’re posing it, then we get more of that light reflection which, of course, isn’t the greatest.

Catch lights are great in the eye, but not when you’re trying to do the macro photography as much, in my opinion, because you’re losing those details. Perhaps we can put a couple of diagrams in the show notes as to how we set up this. Again, I’m going to talk about specialty macro-lenses as well, but hopefully most of you will have at least a speed light or some type of a strobe that you can practice this with if you’re doing your macro photography. The next one that we did is this wasp that I caught at my house, and it’s one of the bigger wasps that I’ve ever seen. It looks ginormous when it’s shot with a macro lens. I think we shot that at 3:1. You can see the details of the eyes, the mandible, the antennae, the small, fine hairs that are coming off of its body, the small amounts of pollen. I can’t even see those with the naked eye. The little details that are there, you just can’t see until you get that close with the macro lens, which is what makes it so cool. Notice the other three eyes that are on the top of its head. I’d forgotten it even had those, and most insects have more than just their big eyes on the side. They also have other eyes.

Anyway, sorry for the insect guys out there, I’m not one of you, and I didn’t know that they all had these eyeballs like this, and it’s so cool to me to see those fine details. So, here’s what I’d like you to do. If you have a macro lens, it doesn’t have to be the same lens that I have. There are a lot of different techniques. I’m not proficient with all of the macro shooting techniques that are out there. I know there are a lot. You can buy different magnification tubes; you can reverse your lens.

There’s all kinds of a cool hacks that you can do that will get you even closer photos than what I had with this lens for a fraction of the money. You also can take super crazy, close up macro shots with a lens that you probably already have just by doing a few of these lens hacks. Go out there and explore online. If I can find some of these links, I’ll post them again on the show notes that show some of the hacks that you might be able to do with the 50 millimeter prime lens or another lens that you might have that’s actually reversing it, flipping it around, and taking macro shots with that. I’d like to hear more about what you think with macro photography.

Show me some of your best shots, and we’re gonna get into this. I wanna post a shot at least once a week of some type of macro subject in addition to all the other work that we do in the studio because I think it is amazing to take a look at the smaller things that are around us in everyday life, and really appreciate what’s there, and the amount of detail and intricacies that are around us every moment of every day that we may not always pay attention to. So, until next week, I hope you get out there, find something fun to shoot. It doesn’t matter what it is, just get out there, take photos, have fun with it. If you have questions, send us a note, send us an email, a Facebook message, and we’ll see you next time.