Princes Risborough U3A Photography Group -

Macro Photography

Introduction
The precise definition of macro photography is extreme close-up photography where the
image on the camera's sensor is at least as large as the object itself (i.e. the magnification
ratio is 1:1 or larger). But this definition has become blurred to mean photography at closer
distances than is possible with the camera's normal lenses.
In these notes we will look at various techniques for getting close-up photographs and
compare them.
These notes show images of various bits of equipment: these are included just as examples
or illustrations, and are not intended to be recommendations.
These notes cover the following topics (click on topic to follow the link):
Macro lenses
Close-Up (CU) Lenses
Macro Coupling Rings
Extension Tubes
Bellows
Once you have got into macro photography ...
Reversing Rings
Focus Stacking
Macro Slider Rails
The ultimate tool for macro photography – the microscope

Macro Lenses
The non-interchangeable zoom lenses on modern bridge cameras generally have a macro
capability, allowing you to focus very close to the object.
For cameras with interchangeable lenses, specialised macro lenses can be purchased. These
lenses are obviously designed to allow very close focussing, but they can also be used for
"normal" photography: however they may not perform as well as standard lenses for
normal photography and generally have a smaller aperture (i.e. let less light through than a
standard lens) and so require longer exposure times and/or a higher ISO setting.
Modern macro lenses cost several hundred pounds, and so are unlikely to be an option
unless the user has proved to themselves that they are going to be doing a lot of macro
photography – perhaps by first using some of the lower-cost options below).
For photographers who are comfortable with manual focussing, manual apertures, manual
exposure control, and adapters, a lower cost option for acquiring a high quality macro lens is
to buy a second hand one from the days of film photography. The SMC Macro Takumar
lenses (made by the Asahi company which was the manufacturer of Pentax film cameras)
are highly rated, and you can pick them up for about £100.

Even if you have a macro lens, you may still want to get closer than the lens allows, and so
you might need to use the lens with some of the techniques we describe below – especially
extension tubes or bellows.

Close-Up (CU) Lenses

A CU lens is the camera's equivalent to reading glasses. It is a simple lens that screws into
the filter thread at the front of the camera lens, and so you may see it referred to as a close-
up filter. If you have a compact camera without a filter thread, you could get away with
holding the CU lens in front of the camera lens.
CU lenses can be purchased very cheaply, typically as a set with different strengths.
You have to buy the size which is appropriate to the filter thread size on your camera lens
(58mm in the example above),
These lenses are rated in dioptres (+1, +2, +4, +10 in the example above): the more dioptres
the closer you can focus. And you can combine lenses: adding a +1 dioptre CU lens to a +2
dioptre one gives you a +3 dioptre CU lens.
CU lenses are inexpensive and can work with almost all cameras, and retain the camera's
ability to focus automatically and set exposure automatically.
However, their main problem is the effect they have on image quality, especially as the
number of dioptres increases. You may detect the image being slightly less sharp, and it may
become distorted at the edges. The most obvious problem is chromatic aberration where
you get colour fringing. The image below is the most extreme case – using 4 CU lenses
stacked to give a strength of +17 dioptres and looking at the extreme corner of the image:
The colour fringing can be improved by spending more money and buying an achromatic CU
lens, e.g.

Macro Coupling Rings

If you have a camera lens with a filter thread and a second camera lens (even an old film-era
lens), then a macro coupling ring is a very low-cost opportunity.
You screw this gadget into the filter thread of your camera lens and then screw the second
lens onto the other side of the coupling ring. (Obviously you need to buy a coupling ring of
the appropriate size for the filter threads of the two lenses you are using – in the above
example, these are 49mm and 58mm.)
What this lets you do in effect is to use the second lens as a very high quality, very strong CU
lens.

A possible issue with this approach is that the image does not fully cover the camera sensor,
so it's like looking down a microscope.
This problem can be reduced or eliminated by:

 using a lens on the camera which has a longer focal length than the second lens you
are attaching to it: if the camera lens is a zoom lens, then try zooming to the
telephoto end of its range.
 avoiding use of very small apertures on the camera lens.
 making sure that the aperture on the second lens is fully open.
Your camera's automatic exposure mechanism will continue to work, and the automatic
focussing should work – but you may need to go to manual focussing.

Extension Tubes
Extension tubes are only for cameras with interchangeable lenses. They are fitted between
the camera body and the lens, moving the lens further away from the camera and so letting
it focus very close up. They normally come as a set of three tubes of different lengths, giving
you 7 combinations of length.
Depending on your camera type, extension tubes can move the lens by up to 60-70mm
away from the camera body, and allow you to get very close to the subject:

If you buy extension tubes designed for your specific digital camera, then the camera's
automatic exposure system will continue to work. And so should auto-focussing, but it is
likely that you will have to switch to manual focussing.
Extension rings come in a wide range of prices – from £10 for third-party products to several
hundred for those made by Canon, Nikon, etc. They all do the same thing, so what are you
paying for? Basically it is quality of construction. Here are a couple of major issues that I
encountered with mid-price third-party extension tubes:

 The pin that locks the lens in place was not fully retracted when I pressed the release
button, meaning that the lens could not be removed. I was lucky, and was able to
remove the lens, and then filed the pin down to prevent further problems. So make
sure that the pins on all three tubes retract fully such that they are not protruding at
all when you press the release button.
 Even though the extension tubes look and feel very solid, and even if the
manufacturers claim they are completely made of metal, in reality they are held
together by very small screws going into plastic. So if you fit a heavy lens to them
they can come apart and drop your lens on the floor. I was lucky when this
happened, and so only use the tubes with lighter lenses.
However, now that I am wiser, I continue to use extension tubes happily and successfully.

Bellows
Bellows work on the same principle as extension tubes – i.e. sitting between camera and
lens to move the lens away from the camera body and so allowing it to focus much closer –
but provide more flexibility and greater extension.
Bellows allow you to take extremely close up photographs – as this photograph of the
stamens and pollen at the centre of a gerbera flower show:

With bellows you cannot use your camera's automatic focussing and fully automatic
exposure control. You will need to focus manually (using the bellows' own control or the
lens's focussing ring) and aperture-priority or manual exposure control.
Prices start at £20 and go up to several hundred pounds. However, although I have not
handled a cheaper version, I would expect the build quality to be very low such that the
devices are flimsy, wobbly, and without smooth adjustments. At the same time I am not
prepared to spend the money for a top-of-the range model. But there is a solution to this
problem, which is to buy secondhand bellows from the film era. Here are two examples
which I have used successfully. First is a Pentacon model, made in the former East Germany:

And here is a version originating in the former Soviet Union:

To use these with a digital camera you will need an adapter to attach the camera (about £10
– one for Canon was actually included with the second example above). You will also need a
suitable lens with a manually adjustable aperture: if you do not have one, you can get one
on ebay for about £20. Here is the set-up that I use:
Bellows will give you the most extensive capability for macro photography, but be aware of
the following:

 They are not as straightforward to use as the other techniques mentioned

previously.
 With bellows you cannot use your camera's automatic focussing. You will need to
focus manually (using the bellows' own control or the lens's focussing ring.
 With bellows you cannot use your camera's fully automatic exposure control. You
can use aperture-priority auto-exposure or manual exposure control.
 The image will be quite dim because of the high degree of magnification and the
need to use a small aperture (as discussed later). This means you probably need a
flashgun to provide enough light: with normal room lighting you will need quite long
exposures and are likely to get blurred images because of camera shake.
 If you have dust on the sensor of your camera, it will become more apparent when
using bellows. You can see some dust spots on the picture of the gerbera stamens
above.
But if you want to try this extreme macro photography, don't be put off – I'll be quite happy
to help you get started.

Once you have got into macro photography ...

Once you have cut your teeth on macro photography, there are some things you may wish
to consider to make your results even more impressive.
Reversing Rings
Unlike macro lenses which should work perfectly well on extension tubes or bellows, normal
camera lenses are designed with the assumption that the distance from lens to subject is
greater than the distance from lens to the camera's sensor. When you use longer extension
tubes or bellows, this assumption falls down: the lens is now closer to the subject than to
the camera sensor. As a result, the image quality provided by the lens drops.
Significantly better image quality can be obtained by using a reversing ring, which turns the
lens back to front. Here is an example of a reversing ring suitable for the bellows examples
shown above:

The ring screws into the bellows unit (which has an M42 fitting), and then the lens screws
onto the other side of the reversing ring using its filter thread (of 49mm size in this example
– ignore the "Pentax" in the item description – it's irrelevant!). The lens in this case must
have an aperture which can be adjusted manually.
If you want to attach the reversed lens directly to the camera body or extension tubes, you
are better off buying a version like this one:

[Picture with Canon reversing ring in place]

This allows the camera's fully automatic exposure and automatic focus mechanisms to work
with your modern automatic lenses, and also doubles up as a small extension tube.
The image below shows the improvement in picture quality that can be achieved by
reversing the lens in this way:
Focus Stacking
The closer you get to a subject, the narrower is the depth of field – i.e. the range of
distances that are adequately sharp. If you are using bellows, you may have a depth of field
less than 1 mm, meaning that you cannot get an object that is not flat completely sharp.
The traditional way of tackling this is to make the lens aperture as small as possible. This
certainly helps, but only goes so far. And making the aperture so small means the lens is not
working at its optimum in terms of image quality. It also means that you need more light or
longer exposures (increasing the likelihood of blurred images).
Fortunately with digital photography there is the option of focus stacking, where you take a
series of photographs focussed on different parts of the object, and then blend them using
software. This can give almost unlimited depth of field, as this picture shows:

The technique of focus stacking is described in U3A Photography Group's separate article on
Focus Stacking.
Macro Slider Rails
When you are focussing extremely closely, it becomes difficult to move the camera slightly
to adjust the camera's view. This can be adjusted using macro slider rails, which allow the
camera to be moved small distances forwards/backwards and left/right by turning knobs.
Prices start at under £20, e.g.:
In my own case, I decided to go for a more expensive model from a brand well known for
tripods, as I wanted to be sure of a sturdy design and smooth movement (look out for
cheaper secondhand ones on ebay):

I have been very happy with this model and it is sturdy enough to take camera + bellows:
The ultimate tool for macro photography – the microscope
If you have access to a microscope, then this is probably the ultimate tool for macro
photography. There are a number of ways to connect a camera to a microscope.
1. Using a lens-less microscope adapter
This is the simpler method, but needs a camera with interchangeable lenses. With this
method, you do not use the camera's lens, which must be removed. Instead you use the
microscope objective lens to project the image into the camera.
To do this you need to buy a lens-less microscope adapter for your camera. These cost
about £10 on ebay, and are fitted to the camera in place of the lens.

You remove the microscope ocular and then insert the adapter's tube into the eyepiece
tube. Most eyepiece tubes have an internal diameter of 23.2mm, but some have 30mm or
30.5 mm internal diameters – so you need to get the appropriate adapter.
You may prefer to mount the camera upside-down (as shown above), otherwise the image
will be left-right inverted.
Use aperture-priority or manual exposure control.
The advantages of this approach are:

 it is easy;
 because it does not use the ocular, it does not suffer from the problem of dust on
the ocular showing up in the image.
But this method has some drawbacks:

 it requires use of a camera with interchangeable lenses;

 you have to re-focus the microscope between viewing the image (using the ocular)
and fitting the camera (after removing the ocular);
 it does not give as high image quality as the other methods.
2. Photographing through the eyepiece
With this technique the camera with its lens is positioned to photograph through the ocular,
so that the camera and lens replaces your eye.
You can use a tripod to hold the camera in the right position – but it can be fiddly to get the
camera in exactly the right position. The approach that I took was to find a second-hand
microscope adapter on ebay which clamped on the outside of the eyepiece tube, allowing
the ocular to remain in place:

Use aperture-priority or manual exposure, and select the lens's largest aperture: setting a
smaller aperture will restrict how much of the subject can be seen.
This method is slightly less easy than the first method but has the advantages that:

 it can be used with cameras that do not have interchangeable lenses;

 you do not need to re-focus the microscope between viewing with the eye and
attaching the camera;
 it gives better image quality than the first method.
The improvement in image quality is apparent in this comparison:

3. Using an adapter with built-in lens

This approach combines the simplicity of the first method above with the improved quality
of the second method. It uses an adapter which fits into the microscope eyepiece tube once
the ocular has been removed (just as the lens-less adapter does) but it has a built-in
eyepiece lens which provides the quality of the second approach.
The down side of this method is that it is restricted to cameras with interchangeable lenses
and its cost:
Bernard Foot
Princes Risborough U3A
January 2018