Macro photography

Diving into the world of macro photography is a great adventure, with many fun, interesting, and creepy subjects to photograph. But getting awesome macro shots takes a lot of time, a great deal of patience, and, of course, the appropriate camera settings.

There are essentially two categories of camera settings that need to be addressed: Those that can be preset and those that must be adjusted at the time of the shoot.

          Preset Camera Settings- that can be done before the the macro shoot.

         On-the-fly Settings- As much as you prepare yourself for your macro shoot, inevitably there will need to be some changes that you make on-the-fly depending on the conditions in which you find yourself shooting.

• Set your camera to aperture priority mode so you have full control over the aperture and depth of field. An aperture of f/8 or f/11 is a good starting point.
• Preset your ISO to 200. This will suffice for most situations, giving your sensor enough sensitivity to make fairly generous aperture and shutter speed adjustments.
• Take your camera out of autofocus mode. Manual mode will give you a much better chance of getting the features you want in focus as sharp as possible. Using your camera’s live view function will help you make sure that your focus is spot on.
• Use your camera’s white balance presets rather than auto white balance. The auto white balance feature is far too prone to color casting to use for macro photography.
• Make On-the-fly adjustments to aperture and ISO as needed. These adjustments will be necessary to increase shutter speed to prevent camera shake, to freeze movement of a moving macro subject, and to account for the wind and other elements that might cause your camera to move.

Conclusion

Whether you’re snapping an image of a butterfly or a flower, or a tiny detail on a large building, having the correct camera settings will be key to your macro photography success.

But even with the most appropriate camera settings, to get an amazing macro shot you will need to practice – a lot – and have a lot of patience as well!