Photocritic photography blog

We’ve featured a lot of macro stuff here on Photocritic before. Most of it has been focused around taking macro photos with an SLR camera. But what do you do when you don’t have an SLR? Are you out of luck? Not at all!

My friend Cameron kindly offered to write an introduction for Photocritic to what you can do if you have to use a compact digital camera for your macro photos…

Reversing a lens and using an extension tube (as described in the Macro photography on a budget article) is certainly a good option for SLR, but for point-and-shoot cameras, you have to get a little more creative.

For a compact digital cameras, I use a simple technique: You can get closer by using a secondary magnifying lens in front of your regular lens. One way of getting these lenses is by taking apart a cheap lens from a SLR camera - you can pick up these lenses for next to nothing from eBay or your local camera store. Ask around: Most avid photographers are likely to have a broken lens or two laying around, and would probably be happy to give one to you. Alternatively, you’d be surprised by how good the lens elements in a regular film-based compact camera can be. These cameras really are a dime to the dozen, so finding one you can cannibalise for its parts should be easy.

For regular macro:

A normal magnifying glass offers only low magnification and often the optical quality is very poor. On the other end of the scale, the frontal element of a broken video camera delivers approximately 10x magnification and the optics are excellent. A lens out of a rifle scope is also very good.

For extreme macro:

If you want to get closer still, try photographing into a microscope. I’ve done over a 1000 photos using that technique, and the optics are excellent. A setup like that isn’t very portable, however, and requires a camera with a small front lens element - most supercompact digital cameras fit the bill.

A point and shoot camera with optical zoom is useful for higher magnification since you can simple zoom the camera to get closer, as long as your camera is able to focus at full zoom. If this doesn’t work, you can focus by varing the distance from the subject, much like you would with the Pringles lens.

Whilst a tripod would probably be desirable, personally, I have chosen a different approach: All my photography is shot freehand; most of the time I will use my little finger as a mono-pod against the ground to steady the camera and my forearm
on my knee to further steady the camera.

Cameron Donaldson is a 17-year old hobby photographer, currently working his way through college. He lives in Northern Ontario, and specialises in macro and nature photography. His website is available atcamerondonaldson.com

Do you have a DIY photography project you’d like to feature on Photocritic? Get in touch with me on post@photocritic.org. If you have a good idea but don’t like the idea of having to write it all yourself, don’t worry - I work as a web editor every day, and would be happy to coach you through the process!

Do you like this article? Tell the world using one of these:
[ Digg | Facebook | del.icio.us | Stumble Upon ]

reddit_url='http://photocritic.org/macro-with-compact-cameras/'

Categories: Camera Mods | Guest writer | Macro | PC articles
Tags:

This entry is © Haje Jan Kamps / Photocritic.org, and was posted on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.