This week Chris and Jordan are joined by renowned macro photographer Don Komarechka, who demonstrates a few simple techniques that can improve your macro photos in a big way.
I appreciate this article. I hadn't considered the technique he uses for uses an ordinary flashlight, and a portable background (the daisy). Pretty straightforward and effective.
Thanks for the great tips. I'm just getting back into macro photography so this is very timely. My setup is a Panasonic Lumix GX9 with an adapter for M42 threaded lenses. Using mainly Pentax Takumar manual lenses with a Pentax bellows. Works great but is a little on the bulky side, especially when I use my Pentax 300mm/f4 lens, Lol.
Terrific video!!! Definitely kicking it up a notch or two in this video!!! Thank you very much for producing this interview; some of the best content and subject matter you two have shared with us that I can remember. Really appreciate Don's knowledge and willingness to share his techniques and expertise! Can't wait to use some of the material he's shared with us in some of my work. Really excited about this! Can see his work being added to other work styles as well. Please do more subjects like this in your future videos!!!
Chris, Jordan and DPReview are doing a great job with these videos. That third arm contraption looks very helpful for macro. I wonder where you’d get something like that.
Great video! I've been getting great results with a phone, although I understand that's not always true for everyone. The thing is, with a phone, I could put a small lens on that cost about $20 and get stellar results. Meanwhile, with a camera, it may require much more expense My desire has been to create a macro rig for a phone for some time. The telephoto camera on a cellphone, at least the one I tested, seemed to have practically identical focusing distance as the wide angle, which is one potential benefit that I think makes phones a very perhaps underrated device for macro.
This is a very inspirational video. I am a tradesman and work all over my city and to relax at lunchtime I go for a walk and take photos, the problem is many areas are photographic "wastelands"
After watching the video I have decided I will make up a little macro kit that I will take with me on those walks. I'm sure if I put the time in and have a little imagination I will produce some good images where previously I found none.
BTW does anyone know what the apparatus is that Don uses to hold his subjects?
Glad we could inspire you, Donzac! The tool you're looking for is called a "third hand tool" - just type that into Amazon and you'll get plenty of options for under $10. :)
Brilliant video made me go out and shoot some macro in my garden trying different lighting would love to know what crystal you use for the back ground looked up some but could only find amethyst a purple colour must try a water dropper and mist spray bottle also ,good to know that this was also shot a small sensor camera . Funny how little light is need for macro tried a clip on flash and wow needs to pointed in 90 deg away from subject or heavily diffused .
I've seen Don twice on T&C, and now here. He's astounding. I always think of photography as the union of art and science, but he has a knack for talking about both things at once - fluidly, accessibly and inspiringly. I'm looking forward to upping my macro game with his insights. Thanks, Don, and keep up the good work.
Best video I’ve seen on DP review in a long long time. Awesome photography. Lots of neat little tricks. I’m definitely going to get me a third hand and some sort of a syringe.
Komarechka's "infrared selfie" at his web page (http://www.donkom.ca/oddly-infrared-portrait/) is really quite astounding photographically, as the photographer well explains in the accompanying text. His idea of IR photography (using false-color, mostly) is highly disappointing, though. Using "modified" equipment turns the camera into a dedicated scientific instrument and evades the actual challenge of acquiring aesthetically worthwhile images using real cameras in real places in real time.
The true output of the light is immaterial to the story. The flashlight was demonstrated on video successfully illuminating the scene for the photograph
Other than identifying the flashlight model (which contains the company claimed output in it's name) for anyone who wants to duplicate the equipment, what difference does the true output make?
There are actually people who study flashlights and become experts.
I think they call flashlights "flares" or something.
Me, I just go to Amazon, search for flashlight, click the 4 star + review button, and find one that I like. That's about as much thought as I need when it comes to buying a flashlight. I just don't care.
Coming from Australia and seeing Don in just a shirt, I was thinking if that was me I would have been shaking so much that I wouldn't have been able to shoot the landscape let alone a macro shot. Don you must have built-in IBIS. Thanks guys for the tips, tricks and inspiration to go out and allow me to create some potentially WOW shots.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I spotted it and was trying to think of a way to make a not-too-snarky crack about it, but yours is way better than anything I could think of. Thanks!
I gave up after a few minutes. This is more about fabrication of a subject rather than shooting macro. I'm not going to prebuy flowers from a grocery store and then pick up ice and stick it into a ground. That has nothing to do with macro and I'd never use such forced methods in my photography.
But that is part of macro. Have you never seen anything but absolute au-natural macro photography? I’d wager that most prominent macro photographers work their photos and subject rather than the other way around.
This is photography as art, not documenting the world as it is. Macro photographers often have to sculpt a scene and be the architect of a narrative. Sometimes it can be as subtle as using a clamp to hold a flower in the desired location for a better background, or it can be completely constructed. Since macro photography is inherently NOT our own reality, and even at best reality is subjective, it's a genre and process that I embrace.
Even on the photojournalist front that should be as documentary as possible, you still choose your frame, focal length, exposure... what you choose to leave out of the frame is as valuable to your narrative as what you include. You don't have to look further than The Vulture and the Little Girl to see the subjectiveness of reality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_vulture_and_the_little_girl
That said, I believe every photographer has a different view on their craft. This is inherent to all art forms. I respect yours regardless if you respect mine.
The picture taking process is macro photography. Set-up-photography or as you call it "fabrication of subject" has been going on for a very long time. It is use in everything from food photography to portraits.
Just like artificial light and a hired professional isn't studio shooting...? If you can find the perfect composition, lighting, and weather for the perfect shot all the power to you. Sometimes we have physically MAKE the magic happen.
Faking things for pictures doesn't interest me. It is frankly shocking that anyone finds that interesting. It is fake through and through. Why is it specifically for macro? It is essentially doctoring a photo beforehand like photoshop is for after.
But the reality is that there is no purity in photography. If you move to the left or right to avoid something, then you've just excluded part of the scene.
If you use a flash, you're adding light... artificially.
If you use a long exposure on a waterfall, or to make people blur out of existence, or for star trails; it's all fake.
If you use a zoom, that's not reality. People's eyes don't zoom!
If you use a polarizer to change light, that's altering the scene.
Post-processing is fake. All of it! If you do it, you cannot claim to be a purist.
Eventually, I came to the realization that everything in photography is fake. The trick is to make it look real enough to be convincing, but not so real that it's commonplace and boring. So that's why so many photos are over-saturated; and it's not always bad, it's just usually not done very well.
Anyway, I found it to be quite wonderful. Photography is art, not realism. Reality is boring. Art is human creativity.
ive been shooting macro for years ... but seeing another point of view and the out loud thinking of chris and don as they discuss ideas and choices for enlivening macro shots has been a very worthy few minutes and rekindles the fire of shooting creatively
dp review video features like this are a true highlight of your website
Not Don. I've heard him talk about cutting a photo session short because he had to release an insect before it died. In fact, he cultivates lady bugs and praying mantis in his garden to both benefit his flowers and to serve as photo subjects. Now, his insect subjects might from time to time succumb to invisible ink or something he uses in one of his "mad scientist" photo experiments, but that's rare.
DPReview should aim to become more of a learning resource to help us develop skills and vision. And spend less time talking about linear resolution and the latest in iPhone technology.
Yes, more educational features would be welcome and maybe help improve the tone of the community as well. Sharing tips and resources is much more positive than fighting about Which Camera Is Best Camera.
I’m with you, buddy! Humanists against flower stores! And gardens! And vegetarians. And meat-eaters! And drinking through straws. And walking clad in shoes. And flushing the toilet and the fauna of one’s mouth!
Once I found a curled up rose on the street dying but not dead and took it home, set it in a bowl of water with a black-plastic background and did a close-up macro-style abstract image in B&W that is still memorable. The rose's dying performance (it opened up to the lens in one last gasp of life) was its gift to me (if not to photography!). It showed me the tremendous depth of life in plants.
Another GREAT vid. Loved the sign cameo in the beginning. LOL What do you call and get one of those roach clip thingies? I learned a ton through that vid.
Just type "third hand tool" into Amazon and you'll get a ton of options for under $10. Some have alligator clips ("roach" clips), others have a more tweezer-like clip. Thanks for enjoying the video!
Interesting, but I guess that (again) the header is not that good....
This is about creating artistic images with macro equipment more than it helps any of us with "simple techniques for great macro photography" out in the real world.
Don't get me wrong: There is nothing wrong with artistic photos, and there are some really nice ones. And as such the video is really inspiring.
That was really neat. I need to keep this in mind. I don't have a proper macro, but I have extension tubes and I need to use them for fun stuff like this. I love the lens effect of the water drops with the flowers. I'm going to do this myself.
I'd like more tutorial videos like this - astrophotography with the various light pollution filters? Aurora photography? Babies? Cars? Big family groups and how to light them?
Hmmm. Not really my style. Not that there's anything wrong with this, but just personally I consider the story behind an image to be as important as the image itself, and for me a story of "I found this incredible thing by looking closely at my environment" is more interesting than "I broke up some ice and put some grocery-store flowers behind it and then brought in some artificial lighting to construct this scene." I know it's just a personal preference, but for me macrophotography is about discovery and hidden beauty, rather than creation and manipulation.
But anyway that's a good set, you can go hiking and bring some of those items to help some compositions (backgrounds and lighting basically as well as some water droplets)
Yeah, I've used my headlamp as a light source before. It was more the manipulation of objects in the scene and the use of props that I found unappealing. Just not to my taste, that's all.
Thanks Peter! It's called a "crab clamp". Type that into Amazon or eBay and you'll get dozens of inexpensive options. They all have a tripod screw mount, and I mounted it on a Manfrotto Pixi tripod.
Enjoying and informative video from the team as usual. Very nice techniques! Indeed micro 4/3 cameras can be considered as the idea tool for macro photography. Kit lenses already focus very closely and have good magnification.
No. Ok, i'll explain. He spokes about "revealing the details..." and then reveals what is behind the leaf. Thats why the link starts on second 6. Got it now?
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