Macro photography
- close-up photography
- 1:1 macro
- photomacrography
Life size on the sensor: centimetres away, millimetres of focus, and a flash to pay for it.
Opens an image model with the prompt in it. The price is on the page before you sign in.
What it is for
Macro is defined by a ratio, not by a feeling. At 1:1 a five millimetre fly covers five millimetres of the sensor, which is life size. Closer than that is 2:1 or 5:1, and a portrait lens at its closest focus is only about 1:8.
Everything difficult about the genre comes from that ratio. The working distance falls to centimetres, the depth of field falls to millimetres, and the effective aperture darkens as the lens extends. No ambient light survives it, so a flash is not a stylistic choice but the only way to make an exposure.
How it works
State the reproduction ratio. Say 1:1, or 2:1, or life size. This is the one instruction which separates macro from a close-up.
Give the working distance in centimetres and name the lens: a 100mm macro at about eight centimetres, or a 65mm at two. Then give the aperture, f/11 or f/16.
Say the light is a diffused flash held close in. Say the depth of field is a few millimetres, and name the part which is sharp: the eye, the stamen, the escapement, the near edge.
When to use it
Use it for insects, flowers, eyes, feathers, crystals, watch movements, circuit boards, corrosion, seeds, skin.
Leave it alone when the subject is bigger than a hand. At that scale the ratio falls away and a normal lens with a close focus does the job better.
Told apart from its neighbours
Cinema lists Macro as a lens. This entry is the genre. The subject is small, the reproduction ratio is 1:1 or closer, and the working distance is centimetres.
Macro texture in the commercial set uses the same optics for a selling job: the weave of a cloth, the grain of leather, the surface of a cream. Macro photography is the whole practice, and its subject is often alive and moving.
Still life photography arranges a group of objects at f/16 and holds all of them sharp. Macro holds one millimetre of one object, and the arrangement stops mattering.
Where it is used
The 1:1 macro lens has been standard since the 1960s, and the 100mm and 105mm focal lengths remain the common ones, because they give about fifteen centimetres of working distance at life size. Focus stacking, which combines dozens of frames each focused a fraction of a millimetre apart, is how museum specimen plates get a whole insect sharp. No single exposure can do it.
- insect and flower plates
- watch movement catalogues
- museum specimen photography
The prompt
Replace the blanks with your own subject, keep the rest. Then run it on an image model.
<small subject>, macro photography at 1:1 reproduction ratio, 100mm macro lens eight centimetres from the subject, f/16, a diffused flash close in as the only light, depth of field a few millimetres with the eye sharp and the rest falling away, every hair and texture resolved
What goes wrong
The picture comes back as an ordinary close-up of a whole flower. Say 1:1 reproduction ratio, say life size, and give the working distance in centimetres.
Everything in the frame is sharp, which is impossible at this scale. Say the depth of field is a few millimetres, and say exactly which part carries the focus.
Leave out
ambient light only, a wide view, a visible room behind, a soft subject
Watch for
At 1:1 and f/16 the depth of field is about a millimetre. Say which part is sharp, or the model puts the focus on the wrong end of the insect.
Questions
Shoot it
Pay for the one run. No subscription, and the price is on the model page before you sign in.
Next to it in speed, scale and intent
