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Interesting article. Thanks for the tips.

Oh, and nice shots, Chris!

Very nice article covering the basics of macrophotography. A couple of other tips-

- use another person to act as a windbreak or to (off camera) hold the object in place as the slightest hint of a breeze will move that flower or whatever the subject might be. With extremely small depth of field wind movement of a 1/4 inch will destroy the shot. Also, I have also gotten my helper to help with light management for more or less of it or location of the light source when auxiliary flash was used.

-with macro for flowers, as in your example above, water drops bring increased drama to the photo. Bring a "spritzing" bottle along as the source of the water drops and consider using a polarizing filter for one of the shots if water reflections are involved, it will alter the reflections greatly if used properly.

There really aren't any "ifs" about tripod use with macrophotography. A tripod is an absolute must for taking these pix on a regular basis. Not 1 out of a 100 macro shots come out well when using a macro lens without a tripod.

Best wishes!

1:1 macro is one area where the increased depth of field that occurs naturally with crop sensors can work to your advantage.

Is there an inexpensive macro light set up? Years ago I could use two slave lights on a bracket mounted on the lens using a filter adapter ring.

A considerably less expensive alternative to purchasing a dedicated Macro lens is to get what is called an Extension Tube. By inserting this extension between your camera and lens you effectively turn any lens into a Macro lens. I've been using one for about 9 months and have been happy with the results.

hswt, on 24 July 2011 - 08:23 AM, said:

For even better quality, combine the extension tube (or bellows) with the lens reversing tip above using a lens reversing ring, which has your camera's lens mount design on one side and its filter thread on the other. The reason the quality is better is because,bu moving the lens away from the body with the extension ring, you are actually reversing the ratios of lens to object and lens to sensor; i.e.: the distance from the optical center of the lens to the sensor is greater that the distance from the optical center to the subject. Most lenses are designed for the greater distance to be to the front and the lesser distance to the back, so reversing the lens takes advantage of lens optimizations.

This was a commonly recommended technique in film photography. I suspect some research would be required to obtain the right lens reversing ring for digital mounts, but at least there are the 4/3rds and successor lens mount standards.

No, DON'T try reversing the lens on a point&shoot, unless you're one of the Mad Scientists from Instructables.com, which has all kinds of crazy digital photo projects and hints!