How to take acro pictures?

One of my lenses goes down to 14mm. I figured the lower the number, the closer shot you can get.

But on the four thirds site, they have a picture taken with one of their lenses at 35mm that looks like this:



Theres no way I can get that in focus with my camera or lense, or at least I don't know how to.

This picture (from my updated gallery - criticism is very welcome) is just about the closest I know how to get:



Any help on settings or something that can allow me to get closer shots?

Schmidt1989 said:

One of my lenses goes down to 14mm. I figured the lower the number, the closer shot you can get.

Click to expand...

Focal length has absolutely nothing to do with close focusing ability. In fact for more magnification you want the lens at its longest focal length, providing it has the same minimum focusing distance at its widest and most telephoto.

Schmidt1989 said:

Theres no way I can get that in focus with my camera or lense, or at least I don't know how to.

Click to expand...

It all depends on the lens and its minimum focusing distance. If you want to get more magnification then you need a macro lens, or you could add extension tubes to the lens you have, or you can buy supplementary close up lenses (sometimes erroneously called close up filters) that screw into the filter threads of your existing lenses.

Schmidt1989 said:

This picture (from my updated gallery - criticism is very welcome) is just about the closest I know how to get:

Click to expand...

Try it again, but zoom in to the lenses telephoto setting instead of its wide angle.

Brian A.

Just to repeat what Brian said.

Close focusing is not dependent on focal length. Some of the best close focusing lenses are longer. Generally zoom lenses with close focusing ability increase magnification as you zoom in.

For proper macro you need a macro lens. You can get by with a close focusing lens for some shots.

Here is a message I posted earlier today about macro lenses and closeup filters. It is for Nikon, but most of it should work just fine on Oly too.
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1030&message=35639646

Thank you both. After a bit of research i've found that my closest focusing distance is 8.66 inches. I'll have to play around and see what I can do. Thanks again for the knowledge i've just gained.

Schmidt1989 said:

One of my lenses goes down to 14mm. I figured the lower the number, the closer shot you can get.

Click to expand...

Mine too, Oly DSLR.

Schmidt1989 said:

But on the four thirds site, they have a picture taken with one of their lenses at 35mm that looks like this:

Click to expand...

Schmidt1989 said:

Theres no way I can get that in focus with my camera or lense, or at least I don't know how to.

Click to expand...

There are two Oly lenses made to do macro photography. The 35mm prime and the 50mm prime. When you use them, they focus very near, the 35mm nearly touches the flower, the barrel of the lens extends a lot to do that.

Other Oly lenses do some close focus but not that close. My kit 14-42 doesn't do much for flowers. My 40-150 kit lens gets me a dragonfly but it has to be at 150mm and I go as near as possible. The 70-300, 50-200, the 12-60 will all do better than the 14-42 kit lens.

Schmidt1989 said:

This picture (from my updated gallery - criticism is very welcome) is just about the closest I know how to get:



Any help on settings or something that can allow me to get closer shots?

Click to expand...

--



Ananda
http://anandasim.blogspot.com

'There are a whole range of greys and colours - from
the photographer who shoots everything in iA / green
AUTO to the one who shoots Manual Everything. There
is no right or wrong - there are just instances of
individuality and individual choice.'

Yeah, I have the same two lenses you have, I have macro filters, but these are only to mess around with.

Schmidt1989 said:

Thank you both. After a bit of research i've found that my closest focusing distance is 8.66 inches. I'll have to play around and see what I can do. Thanks again for the knowledge i've just gained.

Click to expand...

The closest focusing distance is a number of little value. It's the distance between the sensor and the object. It's not even the distance between the front of the lens and the object. It says nothing about magnification, which is the thing that you care about.

What you want to know is the reproduction ratio for your lenses. Most macro lenses have reproduction ratios that go down to 1:1. That means that, at their minimum focusing distance, the image on the sensor is the same size as the object. The distance does not matter.

You apparently have a 4/3 camera. The sensor size of a 4/3 camera is 17.3mm X 13mm. So if you get a 1:1 macro lens, you can take pictures that cover an area that small, or any larger area as you focus out. You can find the maximum reproduction ratio of your existing lenses and divide the sensor size by that value to find the smallest field you can cover.

Disregard the closest focus distance.

--
Leonard Migliore