Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Rocking the poor man's macro

Hoverfly

A photo of a hover fly, not hovering. The guy was hanging around on a seed pod at the top of a stalk of grass next to my garage (don't ask why my grass is seeding out).

I don't readily have $1000 laying around to spend on a macro lens, so I make do with a couple of cheap 50mm f/1.8s taped together, face-to-face. A new 50mm lens will set you back just $130 or so. When not shooting bugs, the 50mm makes a great portrait lens (on a DX sensor camera, it's equivalent to a 75mm). The other lens is an old manual job from an older film camera that doesn't get used any more.

A couple of people have asked about the setup I use to shoot insect macros. I've posted photos of the lens combo, flash setup and sample pics on the James Jordan Photography page on Facebook. There's a pretty thorough explanation of how I go about using the equipment and how I approach shooting bugs and other small things. And if you're also on Facebook, be sure to "Like" my page, mkay?

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You really did a nice job on this hover fly. I will have to see if I can tape a couple of lenses together. It might be interesting.