Some Tips On Close Up Photography

Some Tips On Close Up Photography

by William Lulow

I have done some interesting close-up images lately and have noticed several things about the digital camera’s response to these photographs. In the “old days,” we shot close-ups with a view camera that enables almost continuous focus by a combination of the camera’s “swings & tilts” as well as the small lens apertures. And, since view cameras were almost always mounted on a tripod, really sharp images were no problem.

These days, making a good, crisp close-up is not always as simple. First of all, without the ability to adjust the film plane vis-à-vis the lens, infinite focus is not always attainable. Second, most photographers hesitate to use the smallest possible aperture for various reasons, including the fact that they don’t use tripods. Using really small apertures usually necessitates the use of very long shutter speeds. Because of this, a tripod is a must.

One other fact bears repeating. Sometimes, the smallest aperture is not the sharpest for a given lens. Lenses have optimal apertures at which they usually perform at their sharpest rendition. So, I have found that it often takes some experimentation to determine under which apertures and shutter speeds a particular lens will be its sharpest. Also, very small apertures require much more light. So some type of artificial light is required. If you are working outdoors, photographing flowers or other small objects, sometimes the sun provides enough illumination for small apertures. But, if you are focusing on one flower, say, you probably want to try make the background less sharp so that the flower will tend to stand out more. This would require either a longer lens than most macro variety lenses or a wider aperture. So, you need to decide before you take the picture, what you want to be the most important part of the subject. Here is an example of the Canon 85mm lens used at a wider aperture:

I wanted the berries to stand out from the others in the background. Settings were ISO 100, f/5.6 at 1/125^th of a second. No tripod. But this is also one of Canon’s sharpest and fastest telephoto lenses. It’s largest aperture is f/1.8. So, stopping it down to f/5.6 is about a 4-stop difference. So, for this lens, this aperture represents a nice amount to render the background out-of-focus in almost any close up shot. It’s also the lens I prefer for most of my portraits.

This image was made with my Canon 60D and a Canon 60mm macro lens. The settings were: ISO 100, f/32 @ 8 seconds. Camera was on a tripod and the point of focus was roughly 1/2 of the way from front to rear. Lighting was provided by a single 250watt photoflood lightbulb. Note that the image is extremely sharp from front to back.

Here are some more close up images:

These last two were made without a tripod, but if you really want to make great close-ups, and you are shooting outdoors, a tripod is really a necessity.

One of the other points to note about macro lenses is that they have the ability to focus on objects with 1:1 magnification. This means they can reproduce objects that are the same size on the LCD as they are in real life. There are also macro lenses with this ability in various focal lengths from around 40mm to 120mm. The longer the lens, the further away from the subject you can be.

So, make sure you read the manual for any lens you purchase as well as articles like this.