Fly Macro with compact

[pinktrainers]

Two shots I took on a compact so there's quite a lot of noise, C+C besides that welcome!

 

[jfb]

Interesting shots are these with the straight camera or have you used some additional lenses??? You really need to be trying to get a bit closer, good detail on the first. Try to think about your backgrounds, one of the big problems with a P&S is the extreme depth of field, which means you need to be quite careful, but you can also use it to advantage – I like the second shot with the fly and the grouting! Do you have any noise reduction software; it will help clean things up? You should try to keep your sharpening to a minimum and also use the lowest ISO you can get away with, push it too high and you will get a lot of noise.

 

[pinktrainers]

Both are on a low ISO, but the top one is a very close crop so the noise is a bit worse. In my excitement to mess around with my first few macro shots I neglected to use Camera Raw's noise reduction but obviously I would use it in future!

These were taken with the standard lens on a Canon SX120 in Macro mode. Since it isn't a true macro lens I couldn't get too close without losing focus I'm afraid.

Thanks for the tips! : )

 

[jfb]

These were taken with the standard lens on a Canon SX120 in Macro mode. Since it isn't a true macro lens I couldn't get too close without losing focus I'm afraid.

You can get a simple adapter tube to fit the camera - see - Which will then allow you to fit 52mm filters to the camera. Using a simple close up filters means you can then use the long end of your zoom lens. Single element dioptre filters are really cheap, if you like the results you can then move up the quality scale and look out for some of the very high quality achromatic units (basically they have two glass elements).

A bit of background on how supplementary close up lenses work - they allow your longest lens length to focus at a fraction of meter. The filters come in various strengths, so you will get cheap sets, which give you a +1, +2, +3, +4 and possibly a +10. Fitting a +2 dioptre filter to the adapter will allow your 300mm lens to focus to 50cm (e.g. 100cm/2 = 50cm) a +4 will focus at 20cm (e.g. 100/4 = 20) – you do get what you pay for, the cheap sets are cheap, the expensive ones can cost a lot of money! With the adapter you get also do silly things like reverse a 50mm lens, that is the equivalent of around a +20 dioptre lens, but the working distance is very close – have fun…

 

[pinktrainers]

Thanks for the info, this is something I will definitely look into : )

 

[Dogfish_magnet]

I really like the second shot, good composition and i like the sense of scale with the fly and its surroundings and i think the gritty noise adds to the image.