Not being able to get out much this past winter and spring caused me to shift some of my photography thinking - there is, after all, only so much Price is Right, Jeopardy, and Wheel of Fortune one can watch. To put it simply, if I can't go out to take some photos, then I have to find a way to find interesting subject matter inside. Hence, thinking small.
By getting up "close and personal" with very small things, it is possible to bring the camera inside. And it gives a whole new perspective to how these things are seen.
Look at the photo of the needle from Linda's sewing basket, or more accurately the eye of the needle. You can see that even the strands of the thread are really made up of many threads and the needle is no where near as smooth as you probably have thought a needle is. For this picture, the needle was magnified about eight times in the camera. In other words, what you see in the photo is exactly what I saw in the camera's viewfinder.
By getting up "close and personal" with very small things, it is possible to bring the camera inside. And it gives a whole new perspective to how these things are seen.
Look at the photo of the needle from Linda's sewing basket, or more accurately the eye of the needle. You can see that even the strands of the thread are really made up of many threads and the needle is no where near as smooth as you probably have thought a needle is. For this picture, the needle was magnified about eight times in the camera. In other words, what you see in the photo is exactly what I saw in the camera's viewfinder.
Below is a photo of the other end of the needle. You probably thought a needle was, well . . . needle sharp. But looking at it from a slightly different perspective - through a different lens, as it were - it seems that the tip is sort of rounded. Just don't try to tell that to your finger after you pricked it.
How Is This Done?
You actually have to think big to take pictures of small things. The technique is known as macro photography. It typically requires some special lenses or unique lens combinations to magnify tiny subjects. And magnifying the subject also means that any camera movement is also magnified, so it is important that everything be kept as still as possible. And adjustments for focus can be almost microscopic. In other words, you just can't pick up the camera and do this. You might say, the smaller the subject, the bigger the obstacles.
The photo below shows the setup I put together for my macros. The camera and the subject stage are mounted on a common base to keep them from moving. Both the camera and the subject are mounted on rails and can be adjusted forward-backward and left-right using fine screw adjustments. The subject stage can also be adjusted vertically. Currently three LED lamps are used for lighting the subject.
If you look right in front of the lens in the photo below, you can see the needle from the pictures above. It is stuck in a ball of clay which holds it in position on the small laboratory jack that is used for up-down adjustments. Also, notice how close the lights are to the needle.
You actually have to think big to take pictures of small things. The technique is known as macro photography. It typically requires some special lenses or unique lens combinations to magnify tiny subjects. And magnifying the subject also means that any camera movement is also magnified, so it is important that everything be kept as still as possible. And adjustments for focus can be almost microscopic. In other words, you just can't pick up the camera and do this. You might say, the smaller the subject, the bigger the obstacles.
The photo below shows the setup I put together for my macros. The camera and the subject stage are mounted on a common base to keep them from moving. Both the camera and the subject are mounted on rails and can be adjusted forward-backward and left-right using fine screw adjustments. The subject stage can also be adjusted vertically. Currently three LED lamps are used for lighting the subject.
If you look right in front of the lens in the photo below, you can see the needle from the pictures above. It is stuck in a ball of clay which holds it in position on the small laboratory jack that is used for up-down adjustments. Also, notice how close the lights are to the needle.
In macro photography you not only magnify the subject, but you also magnify your problems. In particular, when the very front of the subject is in focus, the rest of the subject will be out of focus. That is because the depth-of-field of a macro photo is razor thin. To combat this, multiple photos are taken with the focus slightly different in each one. Then all of these photos are combined together into what is called a "stack" to create one sharp, in focus image. The needle photos above are stacks of about 35 - 40 photos each.
This is all a lot of fun, so you can expect to see more photos of small things in the future.
This is all a lot of fun, so you can expect to see more photos of small things in the future.
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