Macro Photography Equipment
(For Advanced Macro Photographers)

There are many advanced macro photography equipment choices available to you that can take your macro photography technique to a whole new level. Some are more affordable than others and some are very complex.

One unique way to get highly magnified macro photos is to use two existing lenses in a technique called Lens Stacking.

Lens stacking involves holding or attaching two lenses, face to face to magnify your subject.

The shorter lens is reversed and is usually attached to the end of the longer lens which is attached to the camera in the normal way. The two lenses are held together with a male-to-male filter adapter.

Using the formula below, you can figure out the amount of magnification that you are achieving for any two lenses that you use.

If you have a 100mm telephoto as the main lens and you reverse the 50mm lens, your magnification would be 100 divided by 50, or a 2x magnification factor. A longer telephoto such as a 200 mm lens would then give you a whopping 4x magnification factor.

It is not an exact formula, but it give you a good estimate of the amount of magnification when you use this lens stacking technique.

The three possible downsides to this method; some lenses don't allow manual aperture control when they are not connected to the camera, you may get some vignetting depending on how the lenses were designed, and thirdly you may be putting the inside part of your lens at risk for scratches or dirt.

A reversing ring, also known as a reversing adapter, is a very affordable piece of equipment that allows you to use your one regular lens by mounting it to your camera in a reverse manner.

You are forced to use manual focusing and manual aperture control unless you spend a few hundred dollars on the manufacturers specialty adapter, but then it would make sense to spend a little extra and get a true macro lens.

The reversing ring is not a bad place to start if you already have a camera with interchangeable lenses. Remember your regular lens was not designed to be a piece of macro photography equipment, so the optics won't be perfect. It is still a great option to use to dabble in macro photography if you already have this equipment.

Bellows give you the ultimate flexibility in terms of controlling the amount of magnification you wish to achieve with your macro photography. Bellows work in the same way as extension tubes, but at a higher level.

With extension tubes, you must change the arrangement of your tubes to change the magnification. Using bellows as your macro photography equipment gives you a continuous range of magnification possibilities without changing lenses or tubes.

Extreme magnification is possible with a bellows arrangement. Extremely narrow depth of field and longer exposure times come along with that extreme magnification. One drawback to using a bellows is its size and weight, making a little less agile to work with while photographing tiny objects.

If the object of your macro photo is stationary, bellows are a great option to get super close-ups.

Macro Photography Lighting Equipment

I use natural macro lighting whenever possible, but due to the challenges associated with this kid of photography, electronic flash is often used by photographers.

Without using any diffusion, this is personally my least favorite macro lighting technique. For me, it is quite unnatural to have equal amounts of light coming from both sides of the subject.

You can soften the harsh shadows by using a diffusing material of any kind in front of your flashes or by bouncing them off of a larger surface to scatter the light.

The big advantage of using flash lighting for macro photography is lightning quick exposures prevent motion blur and the brightness gives you the ability to use a smaller aperture and get better depth of field which is critical in close-up photography.

Ring flash is perhaps best know for scientific and medical photography where shadowless lighting is desired.

It provides very even illumination for macro photography. You can often tell by looking at a macro photo when a ring flash or O-flash was used.

Just look closely for a circular ring highlight on a shiny part of your subject.

The idea behind the O-flash is that it is not a complete circle of light so it will give you a little bit of desired shadowing.

It does not provide a 360 degree circle of light, so may get a little bit of the feel of a directional light, depending on the size and the closeness of your subject.

Another resource for you if you are interested in more information on how to use your macro equipment can be found in a variety of books offered on Amazon.com: Books on Macro Equipment at Amazon.com

If you want to look at buying a certain piece of macro photography equipment read the reviews at Amazon: Photography Equipment at Amazon.com

Have a blast. Go ahead what are you waiting for? Stimulate the economy by buying, using and playing with some serious macro photography equipment.

Happy Shooting
Photo Tipman

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