I always had a fascination with the smallest creatures. The smaller, the better! I remember watching a groundbreaking film called Microcosmos, years ago wondering what kind of equipment was required to capture the inhabitants of the invisible world.
I have tried macro photography before. Initially with a Canon 100mm macro lens and more recently with an extension tube and a 50mm reversed lens. A few of my macro photos are available on my greeksky and spacetinkerer pages. This time I wanted to go deeper. I wanted to capture the smallest of critters and/or fill my field of view with an eye of a fly! Going deep in magnification doesn’t necessarily mean going deep into the bank account for acquiring ridiculously expensive equipment. The purpose of this article is to investigate an affordable and practical way to try Extreme Macro Photography using a 4X Microscope Objective and a DSLR camera.
So, how deep? Since we are talking about microscope objectives why settle with the macro standard 1X and not try 10X or 20x or even 100x? (See at the end of the article for a few examples explaining magnification). Photographing at great magnifications can be challenging. As you go deeper, the depth of field becomes really narrow. At 1X you may get the whole insect in focus with one shot. At 4X you will only get the eyes in focus and everything else will be blurred. At 10X you will get part of the eyes in focus and even the slightest camera movement will take your subject out of frame. Moreover, after a short visit to your garden or a nearby park, you realise that is much easier to find targets measuring in cm rather than in mm.
The Aphid photo above is one of my better results after experimenting for the first time with a setup that I’m still putting together. I used my old faithful Nikon D600, a lens macro extension and a 4x microscope objective. I don’t like killing bugs (or anything else) so photographing them as they move around is the only option for me. At 4X it was nearly impossible to capture them with the camera handheld. Using a tripod was limiting but at least I managed to capture a few decent shots. My success ratio was low. Only a dozen of photos out of nearly 300 shots.
Just to put things into perspective, I’m including a ‘normal’ photo of the same Aphid taken with my mobile phone a few seconds apart from the macro photo:
My next piece of equipment to test, in addition to what I’m already using, is a macro focusing rail that will hopefully help me improve my shooting success ratio allowing me to capture a series of images to focus-stack. I will keep updating this article adding more details about my macro journey. 🙂
*. Magnification explained:
Magnification, or more accurately the magnification ratio is the relationship between the subject size we are shooting and its projection on our camera sensor. A few examples:
- Photographing a chair, 1 meter in height. If the chair’s projection in the sensor is 1cm, the magnification ratio is 1cm/100cm, or 1/100.
- A bird 20cm in length. If the bird’s projection in the sensor is 2cm, the magnification ratio is 2cm/20cm or 1:10
- A bee measured 1cm. If the bee’s projection in the sensor is 1cm, the magnification ratio is 1:1 or 1x.
- Following the above example if the bee’s head is 0.25cm the magnification ratio is 4x.