Close-up photography & macro lens

[joteo]

Kee Hoe,
What type of macro lens did you get ? Tell us the brand/model so that we can help you. For taking photo of fishes and aquatic plants, you should use either a 50mm or 100mm macro lens. You should also consider getting a good external flash if you don't already own one.

Thanks Gan, Have been trying to find out what lens i bought. Anyway i realise certain setting of the lens required exact fit or the appropriate SLR camera.
With my panasonic, i can hardly see anything when i reduce the shuttle opening for additional magnification effect.

The lens that i bought have label: "1:4.5 f=100~200mm" don't really know what it means.

I guess i will have to save up for a D70 and putup with my panasonic lumix fx7 which is a fine camera for general purpose. I just foundout that i can kind of do manual focusing with this camera. Another neat feature i had just found out.

Kee Hoe,

Can you give us the brand of the lens? It sounds like a zoom lens to me that may have a macro feature. But you might not be happy with the macro as it will give you less than 1:1 magnification.

Nevertheless, please do try this with any object - not the fish:
1. Open the apeture of the lens to the largest opening - as you look through the lens, you will see the blades opening up allowing in the greatest amount of light.
1a. put your lumix into manual focus.
2. Handhold the SLR lens in front of of your lumix. Put the lens opening toward your lumix. (Lens opening facing lens opening)
3. focus on a small object. Use your body to lean in and out towards the object to attain focus.

At this zoom level, you should achieve a high degree of macro.

This:
http://forums.clubsnap.org/showthrea...hlight=megaweb

is what I'm driving at. You can see that the part facing the outside is actually where the lens should join the body on an SLR camera.

Does it work? Let us know.
joanne

[keehoe]

Hi Joanne, Thanks for the guidance. Is it like this?





Looks like i wet the S.Mag egg a bit too early.

[whuntley]

A useful trick in using lenses for imaging is that the total aberrations tend to be more if the light is forced to bend more at any one surface. A lens designer tries to make the light bend as small an amount as possible at every surface.

If you are using a plano-convex lens to image a distant object, it pays to orient the lens so the distant object is on the curved side, and the image plane is on the flat side. The other way around, light coming from a very distant object would hardly bend at all at the first air-glass interface, and all the imaging would have to be from a single surface doing all the bending. It would be much more blurry.

A 35mm prime lens is ordinarily used to take fairly parallel rays from a distant object and converge them sharply onto the film. Lenses are quite indifferent to the direction the light is propagating, so placing the normally-inside-the-camera surface near an egg or bug will project an image at a great distance. If your digicam lens is near the normally-outside surface, it can make that set of rays into a magnified image on the ccd sensor. Both lenses are used in their lowest aberration position. Makes for great microphotography.

Wright

[RonWill]

Wright, I'm feeling dense this morning but could you run that by me again in layman's lingo, especially the bit about digicam lens.

Also, what is "first air-glass interface"?

[hwchoy]

ronnie:

plano-convex is a lens group that has one curved (in this case, convex, i.e. bulging ) glass surface, and the other side being flat.

what Wright is saying is that the curved side should be facing the distant object, and the flat side should be facing your sensor, or film.

if you use a lens in a reverse mode, you get a very large magnification (as being suggested here) but you will have a lot of distortion because now your curved surface is now facing a nearby object (i.e. the sensor). In this case, the lens is useable at the centre portion where there is much less distortion as the air-glass interface (i.e. where glass meets air ) is relatively "flat".

Wright, is this the correct explanation?

[whuntley]

No. I was afraid I might cause confusion, as this is pretty deep into optical theory.

A simple lens has two surfaces where the air and glass meet -- the air-glass interface. Light bends, if that surface is tilted off perpendicular to the light ray, the more the slope the more the bend. Low distortion asks that the bends be divided along the light ray among the surfaces, so all the bending isn't done at one surface.

We can pretend that the complex set of lenses that make up a camera lens is like a simple lens. One side always likes the light entering (or leaving) as if from a long way away. The light on the other side is leaving (or hitting) the glass over a wide range of angles, like a cone with the image (or object) at the apex. The waves are nearly plane waves on one side, and sharply-curved wavefronts on the other

Using a standard 35mm lens backwards and the regular digital camera lens in its normal position -- our only choice if we are too poor for DSLRS -- we can do super-macro or microphotography with quite decent resolution.

It has nothing to do with the center. It has everything to do with getting an accurate image into good focus.

Egad! Am I going to have to do some sketches?

Wright

[hwchoy]

haha I'm pretty sure I am trying to describe the same thing, see how difficult it is! yes I think you should do some sketches

[keehoe]

Thanks Wright, some diagram would helps a great deal. Especially on how to adjust the light for clearer picture on the magnified object. (keeping two hand steady is already hard enough for beginner like me.)

I think taking object of close distance would need less intensity of the light. High light intensity will cause too much distortion.

At some distance between the object and lens, the image appear to be reverse but clear, magnified object can be seen but difficult to control and have picture taken at that setting.

Wright, Is this what you mean?

I always wander how Svein get such a good focusing on the fish, while the background is completely "blur". That really brings the fish out of the picture. Are those using manual focus lens?

[whuntley]

Thanks a lot Heng Wa!

OK, I'll give it a little thought. My motive here is to give any phish photographer enough insight to get good pics.

Basically, good images are best made by proper lighting ("photography" means, from the original Greek, "writing with light"). Second on the list is a good imaging system. A pinhole can do a good rendition of a brightly-lighted distant mountain (look up "Camera obscura"). The lens is the heart of the modern camera. Digital cameras require radically different lens designs from film. [I pity those poor folks who buy a DSLR because they have a huge investment in film lenses. :-)]

My previous posts dealt only with this aspect, and shouldn't be overemphasized.

The number of pixels is far down the list of important properties. Until recently, very few 3.2 MP cameras had lenses that could actually resolve even near to the pixel level. My 1.5 MP Sonys (DKC-FP3 and DSC-D770) make better 8X10 prints than any older camera I have tested with 4 or less MP.

They do have much better lenses, though.

I recently got a better 3MP Canon (S1 IS) that has a pretty decent lens, but is too slow. That is, it needs too much light because the aperture is too small. It has a wonderful "stitch" capability that lets me have the equivalent of over 12 MP for landscapes, which is mostly what I bought it for. It is light and tiny for hiking.

Phishys are really different. You need to take an image of a relatively small area that is difficult to illuminate properly. A normal lens will not focus that close, and some "macros" aren't much help. I can do a "stitched" landscape of the Sierras, because the clouds barely move between exposures. Fish aren't even there when you press the shutter. Even if you don't have that digital curse, "shutter lag," your own reaction time gives you a great pic of a tail leaving the scene.

My current solution to the macro problem is to buy inexpensive "portrait" or "close-up" lenses. Mine are stackable with additive numbers, so a set of 3 (1, 2, and 4 diopter) gives me a choice of 1-7 diopters of magnification.

[Each diopter is an inverse meter of focal length. 7 diopters is 14.3 cm.]

While maybe not enough for really good egg shots, they will more than fill the ccd with most any adult killy.

Use an off-camera flash for really good pics. They freeze motion and can be controlled to give anything from harsh direct light to near soft-box diffuse light, depending on how you use them. Use a slave adapter, as most digicams have no hot shoe or PC connector for external flash. This may mean you have to use a bit of aluminum foil to block the direct flash from glaring off the tank.

Was that sufficient bloviating to get me off the hook for doing sketches?

Wright

[hwchoy]

I always wander how Svein get such a good focusing on the fish, while the background is completely "blur". That really brings the fish out of the picture. Are those using manual focus lens?

that is a qualitative function of the lens, known as "bokeh", meaning something like "the pleasing way in which the non-focused areas are blurred".

[hwchoy]

Kee Hoe,

What I understand you and Jo to be talking about is actually high magnification photography. I think you get more than 5× magnification when using a lens in reverse.

"Normal" macro photography is anything from 1× (True Macro) and lower. True Macro means the size of the object is reproduced onto the film. so if you have a 30mm fish, the image of the fish will occupy 30mm on your film. (there is a caveat here when referring to digital photography, since most digicam and DSLR sensors are only a fraction of the area of a normal 35mm film which is 36×24mm).

People like Svein would not be using your method of reversing a lens when taking pix of fishes, since there will be too much magnification and you can't see the entire fish (to be confirmed by Svein! :P )

In my own case, my fishes are typically taken with a +4 to +9 diopter or close-up filter.

[keehoe]

Ohhhh, so Macro lens doesn't do magnification. Does the distance betwen object and lens have to be the same as from lens to film (CCD)?

[hwchoy]

they all do magnification, relative to the "normal" size of the subject on film.

[Green Baron]

I always wander how Svein get such a good focusing on the fish, while the background is completely "blur". That really brings the fish out of the picture. Are those using manual focus lens?

Kee Hoe
The 'blur' effect is due to shallow depth of field. You can achieve that effect by using a big apperture (small f-stop e.g. f4 instead of f16) or using a longer lens (100mm instead of 50mm).

[joteo]

Hi Joanne, Thanks for the guidance. Is it like this?





Looks like i wet the S.Mag egg a bit too early.

Yup! You got it! The dark corners are caused by vignetting which you have correctly cropped out.

It's quite hard to focus isn't it? get plenty of light to help you along.

Make sure that the aperture blades are fully wide open. This will give you a shallow depth of field - ie blur backgrounds - and make focusing especially hard, but let's in the most light.

Keep the subject in the centre of the lens as much as possible as that will be the sharpest part.

Finally, keep the lens plane as parallel to the object as possible so that most of the object can be in focus.

It's hard and frustrating, but the more you take lousy shots, the better and faster you'll get better shots.

This is the joy of digital. I've taken so many pictures, that I've averaged the cost out of all my equipment to 30 cents a shot. That's as good as developing al the photos at a normal shop. From now on, my average cost of a shot will only decrease.

In a previous post, it's mentioned that prime lenses (fixed focal length, as opposed to zoom lenses) are best for this application. This is true.

However, since you have a zoom lens, try this reverse lens application full zoomed in and fully zoomed out. You will find one that is best to work with.

It may not be as sharp, but you will get in sufficient detail.

It was also mentioned that you can stack lenses. THis is correct too. I have placed a fixed 50mm reverse on top of a zoom lens. I have also done it in the opposite way - the zoom stacked reverse on a 50mm lens. The former worked better for me. You can get high degrees of magnification. (And there's some mathematical and scientific explanation for that.) If I do that, I can focus the lens on my bed sheet and see the fibres of the fabric. So it can be really nice to go really close.

This:
http://www.nikonians.org/html/resour...o/macro_1.html
is a nice article on macro photography. Although it is Nikon-centric, as you have tried, you can see that you can do macro photography on just about any camera.

Within that article, there's a page on "reverse lens"
http://www.nikonians.org/html/resour...o/macro_5.html

and
about close up attachments that look like filters:
http://www.nikonians.org/html/resour...o/macro_4.html

Here's someone's post about stacking lenses:
http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-...?msg_id=000aUN

I hope you have fun. I certainly do.

This reverse lens is best for applications where the subject doesn't move. Still I managed to get some decent fish shots. I used this method for half a year, before finally blowing some good cash on a second hand macro lens.

But I believe the training was good. Even though the dedicated macro lens has auto focus, I turn it off. It isn't fast enough for chasing a fish with.

The lesson I learnt with reverse macro - using your eyes to judge and your body as the focusing device - was most invaluable.

What I gain with a dedicated macro lens is that I can fit the whole body of the fish in.

But the reverse macro cost me $165 first hand. The dedicated macro cost me $800 second hand. You can see why I heartily recommend a reverse macro to start out with.

Also, reverse macros are really nice for food too:
http://photobucket.com/albums/y107/j...%20My%20Plate/

Anyway, once you are ready to move up from reverse macro, if you haven't already got one, get a flash first, before plunging money in a dedicated macro lens.

Let me know if you need more help.

Good luck with the eggs!
joanne

[joteo]

Kee Hoe,

Here's another good link:
http://www.mplonsky.com/photo/articles.htm

joanne

[keehoe]

Another attempt on fish egg.

[stormhawk]

Kee Hoe, you're getting better and better.

Nice images, finally can see some real shiny eyeballs. Benny took some excellent close-up images of the embryo and hatching fry of some GAR N'sukka that he brought back. Those would be the quality that you should aspire to produce.

[keehoe]

Thanks JianYang. Does Benny have a website with these photo on?

[stormhawk]

I don't recall it being hosted on a website but I think he posted them on AQ. The key word should be gardneri. I think you can find the topic there. You'll be stunned by the clarity of the images. I was stunned when I saw them. I bet you'll be stunned too.