Macro Photography/Close-up Digital Photography Tutorial featuring Flowers Video Lecture | Capture like a Pro: Digital Photography Tutorial - Professional Skills

hi I'm Tony Northrup and today we're in
the studio to give an overview of macro
photography macro photography is general
close-up photography now I'll show you
what I see everyone tried to do with
their cameras we want to take a nice
close-up picture of a flower and they'll
get nice and close close enough to fill
the frame and then you try to focus and
the camera just doesn't focus maybe you
actually take a picture but it ends up
completely blurry that's because you're
too close each lens has a minimum
focusing distance and if you try to
focus closer than that minimum distance
the camera simply won't be able to focus
so I'll show you how close this
particular lens can actually focus so as
you can see it's not too far away but
it's not that close either what you
really want for a flower picture is
something that just fills the frame and
shows the detail of individual petals
and if you want to get that close you're
gonna have to go into macro photography
fortunately it doesn't have to be that
expensive I've got three different types
of macro photography equipment here the
easiest and cheapest is called a diopter
and this is like a big magnifying glass
that you screw on to the end of a lens
just like a filter my favorite way to
make any lens a macro lens is to use an
extension two extension tubes are simply
spacers they simply move your lens
farther away from the camera body
they go in between the lens and the
camera body and they attach just like a
lens would so here I'm going to put this
20 millimeter extension tube onto this
camera body and that will decrease the
lenses minimum focusing distance I'll
take a quick test shot to see how much
closer I can get now
you can see with the help of the
extension tube that's close enough to
fill the entire frame with just the
center of the flower if I wanted to get
even closer I could add more extension
tubes like diopters as I add extension
tubes I also lose infinity focus so
right now I wouldn't be able to focus on
something even 10 feet away I do gain
that close up ability though for those
of you who really get into macro
photography a macro lens is almost a
requirement macro lenses are dedicated
lenses for getting really really close
up now lots of lenses claim to be macro
in fact this is one of those lenses but
they don't get to what they call
one-to-one magnification one-to-one
magnification allows you to fill the
frame with something the same size as
your image sensor something about this
big macro lenses do that without adding
extension tubes or diopters they also
allow autofocus the whole time and they
allow Infinity focus right from macro
settings so I'll attach this macro lens
and we can see just how close it can get
so you can tell a couple of things in
that picture one I can get really close
and showed the finance details in that
flower but to notice the depth of field
is very very shallow as you might have
learned from chapter four in my book
standing digital photography as you get
closer to a subject the depth of field
gets more and more shallow and that
comes to an extreme level with macro
photography
so again taught in Chapter four you can
solve that by using a higher f-stop
number but when you use a higher f-stop
number your shutter speed goes down and
in fact it'll go down far enough that
you won't be able to hand hold the lens
very well for that you'll need to use a
tripod the tripod will hold it steady
and allow you to use a high f-stop
number now my technique in macro
focusing when I want to get as close as
possible is to set my lens to manual
focus and then move it manually to the
minimum focusing distance then I move
either the camera or the subject closer
to each other until the subject is in
focus so now I'll take a shot at f-22
which is this lens is maximum f-stop
number seen here that got a shutter
speed of a second and a half definitely
need on a tripod for that so f-22 was
good enough to get sharp depth of field
throughout that particular picture but
that one's a fairly easy picture because
the flower is parallel to the plane of
focus it's parallel to the digital
camera sensor a more interesting picture
would be to have the flower tilted at an
angle to get the entire flower in focus
now however I'll need an extremely deep
depth of field that would cover the
entire distance from the closest edge of
the flower to the farthest edge so I'll
take another picture at the lenses
minimum focusing distance as you could
see even at f-22 I can't get the entire
flower sharp what you can do instead use
a technique called image stacking where
you take multiple pictures focusing in
different parts of the flower each time
and then combine them in post-processing
I'll follow up with the second video to
do that one last thing I want to cover
is the use of a ring flash a ring flash
is a flash that's specialized for macro
photography a ring flash attaches to the
front of a lens usually a macro lens and
lights the subject evenly because the
ring flash is mounted to the front of
the lens you don't have to worry about
the lens casting a shadow
however the ring flash provides this
like very bright shadowy light that
doesn't always look so appealing so it's
good if you just want to document a
subject and you need to handhold it but
it's not all that great for creative
types so I'll take another picture of
the flower just to show you what the
ring flash looks like the ring flash lit
the flower nicely and that would allow
me to use a higher apps top number and
therefore get more in focus however the
lighting is not beautiful ring flashes
are important if you need to take a
picture of a moving subject like a
butterfly or an insect because you won't
be able to use a tripod and it can be
difficult to chase the subject down so
this was for Chapter 12 of my book
stunning digital photography for more
information like this check out the book
I have many videos like this embedded
right in there many of which are
exclusive to the book you can get the
book right now on amazon.com if you like
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when he laughs at her
[Music]
[Laughter]