Beginner Macro (Copied form Beginner's forum)

Messages
45
Name
Billy
Edit My Images
Yes
Good Morning all,
I'm after a bit of help and advice if possible.

Yesterday, I finally managed to get out in the garden and get some snaps using my Canon 1200D and 18-55mm standard kit lens, with reversal ring to take some macro pics of small life. Many, many photo's were taken but none (if I'm being honest) am I overjoyed with. There are a few which are ok but all lack the clarity and detail I'd hoped for. For example below is probably snap of the day:

29702723641_dc1588ee29_z.jpg


https://www.flickr.com/photos/60589312@N03/29702723641/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

As I said, it's all basic beginner equipment I'm using. I could have tried to setup with my tripod which may have yeilded some slightly better results, but trying to do that in full manual mode combined with awkward backwards lens while chasing wasps etc around the garden seemed like too much fuss.

The camera was set to shutter priority with this particular pic taken with 1/320th and auto ISO@1000.

I guess what I'm asking is, am I expecting too much from the quipment I've got? Or should I be using different settings? How can I get better results?

Any help, advice, critique is greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Billy.
 
Good Morning all,
I'm after a bit of help and advice if possible.

Yesterday, I finally managed to get out in the garden and get some snaps using my Canon 1200D and 18-55mm standard kit lens, with reversal ring to take some macro pics of small life. Many, many photo's were taken but none (if I'm being honest) am I overjoyed with. There are a few which are ok but all lack the clarity and detail I'd hoped for. For example below is probably snap of the day:

29702723641_dc1588ee29_z.jpg


https://www.flickr.com/photos/60589312@N03/29702723641/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

As I said, it's all basic beginner equipment I'm using. I could have tried to setup with my tripod which may have yeilded some slightly better results, but trying to do that in full manual mode combined with awkward backwards lens while chasing wasps etc around the garden seemed like too much fuss.

The camera was set to shutter priority with this particular pic taken with 1/320th and auto ISO@1000.

I guess what I'm asking is, am I expecting too much from the quipment I've got? Or should I be using different settings? How can I get better results?

Any help, advice, critique is greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Billy.

Welcome Billy. It's difficult to tell at the small size posted, but the clarity and possibly the detail too look ok to me. Reversed lenses are not all that easy to use so I think you did fine at this stage. Bear in mind that most or all of us get high failure rates. On a good day I might keep 10%, occasionally more, and on a bad day I might keep none. Close-up/macro is not easy, there are lots of variables (some to do with you and some to do with the subject, environment, lighting, breeze etc) and I for one have to take loads of photos and sort through them to find the better ones. And you'll get better with practice, but do be prepared to be a bit patient to let things fall into place while you practice and experiment.

Presumably you were using a dumb reversing ring, so the aperture was fixed. Was it wide open or did you set a smaller aperture before reversing it?

You can get greater depth of field by using a smaller aperture, but you probably don't want to go much higher than ISO 1000 or much slower than 1/320 sec hand held. So you might want to think about using flash.

Natural light close-up/macro needs quite good light or calm conditions and a tripod. In the UK at least that can be difficult to arrange. Have a look at the Show us your macro rig thread to see how other people go about using flash. There are lots of ingenious approaches, a lot of them involving very little outlay of money, some using the camera flash rather than adding an external flash. Diffusing the flash light makes a lot of difference and some of us spend quite a lot of time experimenting with flash and diffusion arrangements to try to get nice results.

You don't have to use flash. Some people don't. Some people shoot JPEG, some raw. Some people post process, some don't, or don't much. There are loads of options like reversing, which you are doing, close-up lenses, prime macro lenses, extension tubes and teleconverters. They can be used in all manner of combinations. Over time you can explore and see what works well for you.

So please keep posting, and if possible be specific about both how the shots were captured, what the difficulties were you encountered and what you don't like about the results, and we can take it from there. Have fun!
 
Last edited:
Hi and welcome to the Macro world oh and TP :)
With this setup you can expect lots of failure (especially at the start) I have tried it once and hated it and I`ve been doing Macro a little more than 2 1/2 years.
If you can try get hold of a macro lens, it dont have to be a new one, try fleabay and if you dont have a flash do try get one, it really is a great help but maybe its best for you to try before you buy so go into a shop and see what options you have (ring flash or the other type)
All the best and keep posting shots here, Nick (gardenershelper) is very helpful :D
 
If you like to try my macro lens feel free to pop round 100,180 mpe 65 before you buy any.
 
Amazing, thanks for the responses.

Presumably you were using a dumb reversing ring, so the aperture was fixed. Was it wide open or did you set a smaller aperture before reversing it?

Absolutely. A £2 special from ebay. To be honest I wasn't aware that you could fix the aperture. I thought it was just wide open if reversoed on the new Canon lenses? DoF was something that I was really struggling with yesterday so knowing that I can set the aperture, then reverse the lens gives me another option to play around with.

Another problem was lighting. Using the standard camera flash was awful last time I tried it so didn't even bother with it yesterday. This led to the ISO going up to and beyond 3200 which introduced way too much noise into the pictures. The macro rig thread is a real eye opener - I've already got some idea's for the flash that I want to try out. Actually, this whole Marco forums is brilliant. I've got a couple of weeks off work coming up, so no doubt will be stealing some ideas and putting them into practice.

It seems as though once I've gotten more of an idea about this I'll need to invest is some other kit. First I need to fully grasp what I'm doing though.

Thanks for the help guys.
 
I wasn't aware that you could fix the aperture. I thought it was just wide open if reversoed on the new Canon lenses? DoF was something that I was really struggling with yesterday so knowing that I can set the aperture, then reverse the lens gives me another option to play around with.

To set the aperture for reversed working (on a Canon dSLR), turn the camera on with the lens the right way round. Set the aperture you want to use. Hold down the Depth of field button (that will close the aperture down to the aperture you set). While still holding the Depth of field button, detach the lens and mount it reversed. If you want to change the aperture - you'll need to do it all again.

Unless, that is, you use a smart reverse adapter like this. But it's too soon to be thinking about that, and in any case I wouldn't recommend it.

Of course, if you close down the aperture that will make the not enough (available) light issue worse. Close-up/macro is all about trade-offs. IMO.

Another problem was lighting. Using the standard camera flash was awful last time I tried it so didn't even bother with it yesterday. This led to the ISO going up to and beyond 3200 which introduced way too much noise into the pictures. The macro rig thread is a real eye opener - I've already got some idea's for the flash that I want to try out.

Excellent. Experimenting is where it's at. (IMO)

Actually, this whole Marco forums is brilliant. I've got a couple of weeks off work coming up, so no doubt will be stealing some ideas and putting them into practice.

It seems as though once I've gotten more of an idea about this I'll need to invest is some other kit. First I need to fully grasp what I'm doing though.

That sounds like a good approach to me.
 
Thanks @petersmart, appreciate the feedback. I'll press ahead and hopefully find some better settings. Funnily enough, I actually have a 350D that I use as my spare camera. I might try taking comparable snaps on both and see how they turnout and if there's any obvious differences.

Frankly I don't believe that a camera makes a lot of difference - the person behind it is the main factor.

But having said that the next main factor is the lens - and there is no doubt that a high quality lens makes a great deal of difference.

However the main difference between the 350D and the 1200D is the sensor - the 350D is 8MP and the 1200D is 18MP which gives you a bit more latitude to crop.

An exceptionally good lens is the 50mm f1.8 STM which is the best value lens that Canon produce and with an exceptional sharpness.

Coupled with auto extension tubes you can get extremely good macros.

Or, as a really cheap start buy a set of close up filters from eBay and experiment adding them to the front of your existing kit lens.

But be aware that the closer you can get the less DOF you have.
 
Frankly I don't believe that a camera makes a lot of difference - the person behind it is the main factor.

But having said that the next main factor is the lens - and there is no doubt that a high quality lens makes a great deal of difference.

There is an exception to that. For the few of us who use small apertures the choice of lens makes much less difference because with small apertures resolution is diffraction-limited. As the Joseph james Photography article on equivalence puts it, "As the DOF deepens, all systems asymptotically lose detail, and by f/32 on FF (f/22 on APS-C, f/16 on mFT -- 4/3), the differences in resolution between systems is trivial, regardless of the lens, sensor size, or pixel count."

On the other hand, DOF roughly doubles for each two stop reduction in aperture. It's a trade-off, and images with deeper DOF can appear to be sharper/more detailed than images of the same scene with less DOF, even though the sharpest areas are less sharp than in a shallower DOF image of the same scene.

These considerations only apply to single images. Stacks for example are definitely done better with a high quality lens used at its optimum aperture.

FWIW in my case I shoot at f/8 on a very small (1/2.3") sensor system, which is equivalent to f/28 on APS-C. I have done side by side comparisons between f/8 on 1/2.3" with achromats and f/22 to f/32 on APS-C with achromats and with a 105mm macro lens. I get almost exactly the same resolution/detail and DOF in each case. I have written about this in some detail in my Journey thread.
 
There is an exception to that. For the few of us who use small apertures the choice of lens makes much less difference because with small apertures resolution is diffraction-limited..

Frankly I'm not so sure that actually applies to macros where the small details which would normally be affected by diffraction limiting are very large and so far less likely to be affected.

Diffraction limiting is associated with the airy disc but where, say, the eye of a fly is so tiny that at normal resolutions both it and the small details associated with it would be blurred, at macro sizes we can see the individual lenses in the fly's eye simply because, on the sensor, they are large enough to cover many pixels and thus be far less susceptible to diffraction limiting.
 
Frankly I'm not so sure that actually applies to macros where the small details which would normally be affected by diffraction limiting are very large and so far less likely to be affected.

Diffraction limiting is associated with the airy disc but where, say, the eye of a fly is so tiny that at normal resolutions both it and the small details associated with it would be blurred, at macro sizes we can see the individual lenses in the fly's eye simply because, on the sensor, they are large enough to cover many pixels and thus be far less susceptible to diffraction limiting.

I don't understand your argument, but never mind about that. But is the implication that diffraction does not bring lenses to a common (low) level of sharpness/detail/resolution as aperture decreases, and therefore that better quality lenses do in fact have more resolution than lesser quality lenses even at small apertures - that is, that the quoted extract from the Joseph James article is incorrect (along FWIW with the results of my practical experiments)?

Edit: Re-reading what you wrote and thinking about it some more, I think I misunderstood what you wrote. I think perhaps you are saying that at the macro scale diffraction does not occur, or does not occur so much as at larger scale, or occurs as much but doesn't have as much effect as at larger scale. Were that the case, at the macro scale good quality optics might still deliver more resolution than lesser quality optics at small apertures. Am I understanding you correctly?

Interestingly, although I don't understand the technicalities about Airy Disks etc, I can see that the Joseph James article doesn't qualify its discussion in terms of the scale of the subject/scene. For example, here is an extract from the article leading up to the bullet point that I quoted above.

In terms of cross-format comparisons, all systems suffer the same from diffraction softening at the same DOF. This does not mean that all systems resolve the same detail at the same DOF, as diffraction softening is but one of many sources of blur (lens aberrations, motion blur, large pixels, etc.). However, the more we stop down (the deeper the DOF), diffraction increasingly becomes the dominant source of blur. By the time we reach the equivalent of f/32 on FF (f/22 on APS-C, f/16 on mFT and 4/3), the differences in resolution between systems, regardless of the lens or pixel count, is trivial.​

For example, consider the Canon 100 / 2.8L IS macro on a 5D2 (21 MP FF) vs the Olympus 14-42 / 3.5-5.6 kit lens on an L10 (10 MP 4/3). Note that the macro lens on FF resolves significantly more (to put it mildly) at the lenses' respective optimal apertures, due to the macro lens being sharper, the FF DSLR having significantly more pixels, and the enlargement factor being half as much for FF vs 4/3. However, as we stop down past the peak aperture, all those advantages are asymptotically eaten away by diffraction, and by the time we get to f/32 on FF and f/16 on 4/3, the systems resolve almost the same.

For the same color and f-ratio, the Airy Disk will have the same diameter, but span a smaller portion of a larger sensor than a smaller sensor, thus resulting in less diffraction softening in the final photo. On the other hand, for the same color and DOF, the Airy Disk spans the same proportion of all sensors, and thus the effect of diffraction softening is the same for all systems at the same DOF.

Let's work an example using green light (λ = 530 nm = 0.00053mm). The diameter of the Airy Disk at f/8 is 2.44 · 0.00053mm·8 = 0.0103mm, and the diameter of the Airy Disk at f/4 is half as much -- 0.0052mm. For FF, the diameter of the Airy Disk represents 0.0103mm / 43.3mm = 0.024% of the sensor diagonal at f/8 and 0.005mm / 21.6mm = 0.012% of the diagonal at f/4. For mFT (4/3), the diameter of the Airy Disk represents 0.0103mm / 21.6mm = 0.048% at f/8 and 0.005mm / 21.6mm = 0.024% at f/4.

Thus, at the same f-ratio, we can see that the diameter of the Airy Disk represents half the proportion of a FF sensor as mFT (4/3), but at the same DOF, the diameter of the Airy Disk represents the same proportion of the sensor. In other words, all systems will suffer the same amount of diffraction softening at the same DOF and display dimensions. However, the system that began with more resolution will always retain more resolution, but that resolution advantage will asymptotically vanish as the DOF deepens. In absolute terms, the earliest we will notice the effects of diffraction softening is when the diameter of the Airy Disk exceeds that of a pixel (two pixels for a Bayer CFA), but, depending on how large the photo is displayed, we may not notice until the diameter of the Airy Disk is much larger.

Typically, the effects of diffraction softening do not even begin to become apparent until f/11 on FF (f/7.1 on APS-C and f/5.6 on mFT -- 4/3), and start to become strong by f/22 on FF (f/14 on APS-C and f/11 on mFT -- 4/3). By f/32 on FF (f/22 on APS-C, f/16 on mFT -- 4/3) the effects of diffraction softening are so strong that there is little difference in resolution between systems, regardless of the lens, sensor size, or pixel count.

We can now summarize the effects of diffraction softening as follows:

  • Diffraction is always present. As the lens is stopped down, optical aberrations lessen and diffraction softening increases.

  • The "diffraction limited aperture" is the f-ratio where the effects of diffraction softening overcome the lessening lens aberrations, and will vary from lens to lens as well as where in the frame we are looking (e.g. center vs edges, where the edges typically, but not always, lag around a stop behind the center).

  • All else equal, more pixels will always resolve more detail, regardless of other sources of blur, including diffraction.

  • All systems suffer the same diffraction softening at the same DOF, but do not necessarily resolve the same detail at the same DOF, as diffraction softening is merely one of many forms of blur (e.g. lens aberrations, motion blur, large pixels, etc.).

  • As the DOF deepens, all systems asymptotically lose detail, and by f/32 on FF (f/22 on APS-C, f/16 on mFT -- 4/3), the differences in resolution between systems is trivial, regardless of the lens, sensor size, or pixel count.
And as it happens, the practical experiments I did, at macro scale, were consistent with the final bullet point.
 
Last edited:
I think that the salient point is " the earliest we will notice the effects of diffraction softening is when the diameter of the Airy Disk exceeds that of a pixel"

But as far as I can see (and I have not yet experimented with this so I could be wrong) that will apply when the subject only covers a pixel or 2 as in ordinary pictures, but in macro photography we will still get diffraction, due to physics, but it will certainly not be as noticeable as in normal photography due to the actual size of the subject - after all in an ordinary photo a picture of a girl taken at 10 feet on an ordinary lens will not resolve every individual hair on her head but in a macro shot of a single hair even at f32 the hair is so large compared with the airy disc that it will have no practical effect (as far as I can see).

But on the other hand I have taken many macro shots at f22 and f32 without noticing any problems in sharpness.
 
Last edited:
I think that the salient point is " the earliest we will notice the effects of diffraction softening is when the diameter of the Airy Disk exceeds that of a pixel"

But as far as I can see (and I have not yet experimented with this so I could be wrong) that will apply when the subject only covers a pixel or 2 as in ordinary pictures, but in macro photography we will still get diffraction, due to physics, but it will certainly not be as noticeable as in normal photography due to the actual size of the subject - after all in an ordinary photo a picture of a girl taken at 10 feet on an ordinary lens will not resolve every individual hair on her head but in a macro shot of a single hair even at f32 the hair is so large compared with the airy disc that it will have no practical effect (as far as I can see).

But on the other hand I have taken many macro shots at f22 and f32 without noticing any problems in sharpness.

I don't think our minds are meeting on this. Best to leave it perhaps and not take over Billy's thread. We can discuss it elsewhere if we want to. (It is something that I'm more than somewhat interested in.:))
 
I don't think our minds are meeting on this. Best to leave it perhaps and not take over Billy's thread. We can discuss it elsewhere if we want to. (It is something that I'm more than somewhat interested in.:))

Good thinking - I will also try a few experiments as well.
 
Ok I admit I haven't read the whole of this thread but I have used a reversed lens many times and been told numerous times it looked like I was using a better lens than I was... there are of course issues with CA.

My advice;

aperture f11 --- with some sort of flash and focus light (bright torch can do)
set lens to 55mm and infinity and work down from there (minimum magnification)

Below link to all tagged photos Ive taken with reverse lenses;

https://www.flickr.com/search/?user...=date-taken-desc&text=reverse&rb=1&view_all=1

It wasn't until I felt I'd reached the limits of IQ (CA being biggest issue) of the setup that I moved on
 
Nice tintin thanks for the tips. I'll get out again over the weekend and try to put some of this into practice.
 
Back
Top