Extra photos for bloggers: 1, 2, 3

Photography: it can bring people together and show us stuff that’s out of this world.

…We’ve also heard it can be a hard habit to keep up on a budget. Bummer.

Don’t get too bummed though, ’cause whether your kit contains one lens or ten, we’ve got some great news for you!

We’re going to show you how to take professional looking macro photos with the camera and lens you already have!

Read on and you’ll be making photos of all the miniature stuff in your life as fast as you can flip a lens!

How To Make Macro Photos With The Lens You Already Have

What You’ll Need:

To try this trick out, you’ll need:

• A camera with a detachable lens
  (film or digital are both fine!)
• Some very tiny subjects
• A steady hand

(If your cam doesn’t have a detachable lens, why not try out our macro cell lens with your cell phone camera?)

Step 1: Remove Your Lens

First thing’s first. You’ll have to remove your lens from your camera. (Pretend you’re about to switch lenses)

As always, when changing camera parts, make sure that you’re not in a dusty, dirty, or windy area.

Dust gets inside the tiniest cracks, so don’t remove your lens until you’re ready to start taking photos!

Step 2: Flip it!

Once you’ve released the lens, flip it around, and use your hand to hold it in place.

This means the part that normally locks your lens into the camera will be facing your subject, and the part that’s normally facing outward will be pressed against your camera body.

Hold the lens tight against the opening of your camera. (Take a look at the large photo to see how snug ours was against the camera body)

Step 3: Get Closer!

Since the lens is flipped, you won’t be able to autofocus (or adjust focus manually) as you normally would.

Instead, the trick to focusing your image is to move the camera closer and closer to your subject until it pops into focus in your viewfinder.

You’ll be surprised how close your normal lens can get to such a tiny object and how much detail you’ll discover in your subject!

Step 4: Shoot!

While keeping one hand on the lens to make sure it stays secure, use your free hand to press the shutter button as soon as your subject comes into focus.

When your camera is in a programmed mode (like aperture priority, shutter speed priority, or “P”), it will do all of the metering work for you, and your photos should come out exposed well.

If you’re playing with manual mode, try different shutter speeds until you find a perfect match that makes a well exposed photo.

If your photos are coming out blurry, it could be motion blur. Try programming your camera’s ISO at a higher rating, which allows for faster shutter speeds and helps cut out blur. (Our perfect match was 1/400 of a second at 1600 ISO.)

A tripod (or Gorillapod) could also come in handy if you’re battling blur.

Step 5: Experiment!

Since you’re simply holding a lens up to your camera, it might seem like there’s not a lot you can change if you’re unhappy with your results.

Fortunately, you can get different results by trying different lenses!

You may be surprised to find the changes will be the opposite of what you’d normally expect.

With a 50mm lens, you can get macro-close to your subject, but try out a wide angle (like a 35mm) lens, and you can get even closer! (We made the example you see here with a 50mm lens for the first photo, and a 35mm lens for the closer photo of the dino eye)

Have lots of lenses? You’re in luck! Try photographing your tiny subject with every lens you have to see which one looks best!

Still want to do more?

1. Freelensing! Turn any Lens into a Tilt-Shift or Macro A great philosopher once told us, “first, you must first learn to focus without focusing.” Or maybe it was our optometrist. Whatever. It’s deep. That...
2. Make a DIY Fisheye Lens from a Peephole and Soda Can It’s ugly, green, and it’ll make people stare at you. And that’s why we love it. Our pal Bhautik is no stranger to camera hacking,...
3. Printable, Foldable, DIY Lens Hoods, Fitted For Your Lens. Free! Paul Mutton doesn’t want you to spend twenty bucks on buying a useful, but painfully simple, piece of black plastic. Lens hoods, those round plastic...
4. Make a Clever Lens cap Keeper in 5 Minutes Extra photos for bloggers: 1, 2, 3 Oh, lenscap, wherefore art thou? Seriously, where the heck did you go. Like socks in the wash, we’ve...
5. How to Make a Tilt-Shift Lens for $10 (Plus Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Tilt-Shift!) And now for a non-dictionary of photo terms: Tilt-shift: not the crazy-legged move we bust on the dance floor. Selective focus: not the clever strategy...

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