A Fun Macro Night with Bob Fedder
Bob Fedder of Southeastern Camera Club presented, with knowledge and humor, a detailed macro program complete with powerpoint lecture, a display of suggested lenses and accessories that can be used with macro photography, and completed the evening with hands on trial and error. We had calla lilies and day lilies to work with under lighting provided by Bob. Other club members also brought floral arrangements for everyone to work with.
Some basic macro facts:
- When using your macro lens remember the larger the magnification, the less depth of field (DOF) you will have.
- By increasing your f stop you increase your DOF BUT each increase in f stop doubles your shutter speed requirement.
- Use a tripod, cable release and mirror lock up to achieve sharpness. Another helpful tool is a focusing rail which allows you to move the camera up to 12″ forward and back without moving the tripod. Focusing rails come in various styles and price ranges.
- Increase external light by using reflectors, lamps, ringlight
- Macro lenses have a short minimum focusing distance meaning the distance from the front of the lens to the subject. For example a 50mm macro lens focuses 1.6 inches from the subject, a 105mm lens 4.7 inches and a 180mm lens 9.1. So you can see that the higher mm lens allows you to be further from your subject.
- You can multiply the focal length by adding a teleconverter. This allows you to also increase your distance from the subject and the reproduction ratio. However, you lose 2 f stops of light.
These are just some of the highlights of Thursday night’s program. Any club member may request to borrow the powerpoint presentation for review. Contact: Lois Latraverse
The evening ended a little past 9:15.
Quick Addition: See Dang Photo for some awesome macro images. Tom is a good friend, a superb photographer and has forgotten more stuff than most of us will ever learn. He has a good forum where friendly people answer all questions. (Edit: Karen Leaf)
Reproduction Ration=focal length of lens ∕ amount of extension
