Macro Photography

National Park Passport (3.5″ x 6″)

I just scheduled a Macro Photography Workshop for Tuesday, April 24th.  I  love playing with macro and close-up photography.  For this simple example I grabbed my National Park Passport, which is very cool by the way.  I wish I had bought it when I first started visiting the parks.  The shot above is to show the overall size of the subject.

Spine with minimal depth of field

This shot is taken from the end of the spine looking toward the opposite end.  All shots were made with a Nikkor 105mm f2.8 micro (Nikon’s term for a macro lens) mounted to a full-frame Nikon D4 body.  This shot exhibits minimal depth of field, and the smallest area of overall sharpness because I am shooting down the length of the object.

Spine aligned with camera plane for increased sharpness

For this next image I shot with the camera aligned much closer to parallel with the spine so the area of sharpness is expanded.  It still has very narrow depth of field, but with the sensor plane closer to parallel with the spine we see more of the spine in focus.

Getting as close as possible

For this last image I manually adjusted the lens to the “close focus limit” then simply moved closer and closer to the spine until it came into sharp focus.  This is as close as this lens can focus before adding in additional spacers (extension tubes).  If you think you will want to do a lot of very close-up work then a macro lens should be part of your kit.  Keep in mind however that you can get quite close with most normal lenses with just a few relatively affordable add-ons like extension tubes or close-up filters.  If you want to learn more check out the workshop in April.