Enough boring theory, let's get practical...

Snapping a hard-working bee with a macro lens.

So, life happened and it has been a while. Today for the first time in a while I snapped away at some bees for the sheer joy of it. I did not get stung fortunately.

We have been doing some really boring but essential theory for the last few posts. In this post I hope to share a few booboos we can hopefully all learn from. I know I learned a lot today. It is amazing how one can make silly mistakes and keep making them. I know I do. Today I rattled off about 200-300 shots and really only got about 5 or so I am really happy with.

Macro photography can be really challenging but oh, so rewarding when you get it right. In this post I wish to share some practical examples. Towards the end I will share some nerdy bits for those who are really interested.

Bee coming in for landing

I was blessed to judge images at a local camera club recently. I saw a few contestants make an error I made for a long time. In fact, I made that very error today trying to prove that it is an error. Yep, you please figure that one out because I can't...

Back to the images and judging. As photographers most of us like nice gear, right? As we get the nicer and nicer stuff, some of it will probably be "fast" lenses. "Fast" lenses are usually the term used to describe lenses that are capable of moderately large to very large apertures. Any f/number equivalent to f/2,8 or smaller number (larger aperture opening) such as f/1,4 (very large aperture) is capable of a very small depth of field.

SMC Pentax 50mm f/2 at f/2

Remember this image? This depth of field can often be so small that it the spoils what could have been a very nice usable image.

Moral of the story? Don't shoot a lens at it's maximum largest aperture (or smallest f/number) unless you have tested the lens at that setting first. Know what to expect so you are not disappointed later.

Off-camera image - cropped and resized for screen view - ISO 400 - Shutter 1/800 - f/2,8 - 100mm lens at f/4

This is the original image as is off-camera except that it was cropped to 1200 pixels wide by 800 pixels high, resized for screen view and saved at Jpeg quality 10. At f/4 it barely yielded sufficient depth of field. In fact, not really but it serves the purpose here.

I then cropped out probably somewhere around a quarter to a third of the original image to make the image you see higher up. This is fine for screen use, social media posts and the like. Printing large prints would obviously require a very different processing.

Let's look at another example.

Shallow and curving depth of field zones.

See how the depth of field seems to curve? This is especially true for macro lenses with a very rounded front element. Notice how the sand bottom left is sharp behind the blurred foreground part of the twig?

Remember that three things affect depth of field.

They are aperture opening described in f/number.

A small f/number implies a large aperture inside the lens. This gives shallow to very shallow depth of field at numbers below f/2,8 the longer the focal length of the lens - in this case a fixed 100mm focal length. Remember that 50mm focal length in Full Frame 35mm camera systems is the border between wide-angle (shorter than 50mm) lenses and telephoto (longer than 50mm) lenses.

In this image a 100mm macro lens was shot at f/4. This is a fairly small f/number and therefore low depth of field potential.

Also the focal length of the lens used.

I touched on this above briefly already above. The longer the lens, the smaller or shallower the depth of field and the opposite is also true. Very wide lenses such as fish-eye lenses have practically everything in focus.

100mm is safely beyond the 50mm watershed and therefore a low depth of field potential.

Third, and often overlooked, is the distance between camera and subject matter.

The closer the front of the lens comes to the subject - and specifically relevant to macro photography - the more critical depth of field becomes. Shooting a longish lens at a moderately small f/number at or near it's closest focusing distance to the subject matter rings the final of three warning bells.

Now let's dig a bit deeper...

1:1 Actual size 1200px x 800px cropfrom centre.

Put on your safety belt, here comes some nerdy stuff...

So the original image is 4992 or so pixels wide and 3328 or so pixels high. That gives just a tad over 16,6 Megapixel. Think of it as a billboard measuring 4,992 meters wide and 3,328 meters high. I cut out the central 1,2 meters x 0,8 meters. Now we are looking at only this very central bit of the image.

Note how near bits and far bits are sharp in focus and some are blurred. The background is blurred completely and purely a colourful mush.

Bee working flower - Full Image - ISO 1600 - f/5,6 - Shutter 1/800

Kind of getting there. The depth of field is nearly there. Bumping up the ISO to 1600 in bright daylight still gives decent results BUT it gives me the faster shutter speed to freeze the bee's movement.

Now I don't know how far I could have pushed things because the nice bright direct sunlight went away and left me shadow. The bees also called it a day and went home. I promise to keep trying and share future results soon.

P.S.

I will probably chew a bit on this and make a few changes or elaborate a bit more in the next few days. Bed-time now though. Long day tomorrow...

Happy shooting and, until next time, never be afraid to try even if some say it won't work.

Anton