Macro Photography on a Budget
The classic definition of macro photography is that the image projected onto the digital sensor (or film plane) should be the same size as the subject. At a 1:1 ratio, an SLR with a full-sized chip should have the ability to produce life-size magnification and focus on an area as small as 24×36 mm. Lens manufacturers sometimes describe a lens’s close-focusing capabilities as “macro” even if it doesn’t quite meet that definition and over time it has gradually come to mean being able to focus on a subject close enough so the image is life-size or larger when viewing a 4×6 inch print, which only requires a magnification ratio of approximately 1:4.
I made this flowerbox photo in the shade with a Canon EOS 20D and a used EF 50mm f/1.8 lens.
Conventional wisdom is that close-up photography requires lots of expensive, specialized equipment and while it’s true you can spend lots of money I order to make macro shots, you don’t have to break your piggy bank to shoot macro, no matter how you choose to define it. Here’s why…
A Tiffen Close-Up +4 filter was attached to that same EF 50mm f/1.8 lens allowing me to get closer to the flower.
Most filter and camera manufacturers offer what are sometimes called close-up “filters.” Although not really filters in the traditional sense, they pass the duck test: They look like filters, work like filters and quack like filters, so I’ll call’em filters like everybody else. But close-up filters are really supplementary lenses that shorten your camera lens’ close-focusing distance allowing you to get closer to the subject.
Close-up filters, such as the ones used to shoot the above example, are available in different strengths (or diopters) as a set usually includes versions labeled Close-up +1, Close-up +2, and Close-up +4. A diopter is a unit of measurement that’s used to describe the power of a lens and is expressed as the reciprocal of the focal length in meters. Tip: Close-up lenses are double-threaded so they can be used in combination with one another but to get the sharpest results it’s a good idea to place the strongest filter closest to the lens’s front element. For macro shooters on a budget, a complete set of really good close-up filters in 52mm threads should cost about $50.
