Macro Photography

I don't own a macro lens, but about a year ago my friend Brian told me about how you can create a "macro" lens by placing one lens face to face with another and shooting through both of them. Let me explain.

Firstly, a macro lens is a lens that lets the photographer get really really close to his or her subject. Normally, you need to be maybe two feet or more from what you are photographing. However, with a macro lens, you need to be about a centimeter from what you are shooting. The result is that really small things appear really big. Also, there is a very shallow depth of field. In other words, only objects that are a certain distance from the camera will be in focus, and those in-focus-objects will be contained in a very small range, or shallow depth of field.

Secondly, what I mean by placing two lenses face to face is that I attached a telephoto lens to my camera at about the 100mm range. Then I took out my 50mm lens, removed the covers on both ends, and placed the two lenses face to face. Rings that attach both lenses are available, but I don't own one, so I had to hand hold my 50mm in front of the 100mm.

...probably way more information than you ever wanted to know. But if you want more, here is a link to a video of a guy named Jim Talkington explaining it:

quick video 4, extreme macro photography trick from Jim Talkington on Vimeo.

And here are some of my own creations from around the house. These are straight out of the cameara. No photoshop at all, save for a bit of sharpening.