Thread: Discovered a new challenge - macro photography

Started having a play with some macro photography this week after borrowing a friend's camera with a couple of macro lenses... might have to get a macro lens for my camera too now! Good fun, its like hunting really small critters in your own garden and then some pretty high-precision photography to actually 'shoot' them.

Here are a few I took with friends camera, I'll add a few more once I get something set up with mine.


Fly on daisy (2) by gravelben, on Flickr


Fly on leaf (1) by gravelben, on Flickr


20131230-MacroIV-104 by gravelben, on Flickr


20131230-MacroIV-100 by gravelben, on Flickr


Earwig on daisy (1) by gravelben, on Flickr


20131230-MacroIV-70 by gravelben, on Flickr


20131230-MacroIV-47 by gravelben, on Flickr

More here: Macro - a set on Flickr

Fantastic GB. That shot of the water droplets on the leaf wowed me.

That is awesome sauce there Ben, I'm fond of macro photography myself, just don't have any of the gear!

You need to spray

Nice work. The "Thing on Fence" is a praying mantis egg case (hatched). The good news is it is a native mantis case too. The Springbok Mantis is pushing a lot of our natives out.

Cheers fullas... I was having fun with it, pretty happy with results.

Originally Posted by Ryan

I'm fond of macro photography myself, just don't have any of the gear!

Proper macro lenses are pricey eh! I'd prefer to spend the $ on a new scope so I'm going to experiment with cheap adaptors to reverse mount my current lenses as a substitute, apparently it works well if you don't mind doing everything manually.

Ha, at this stage all I roll with is a phone camera.

Originally Posted by GravelBen

Proper macro lenses are pricey eh! I'd prefer to spend the $ on a new scope so I'm going to experiment with cheap adaptors to reverse mount my current lenses as a substitute, apparently it works well if you don't mind doing everything manually.

I love macro photography, but can't justify the expense of a lens. I've heard reverse mounting works pretty well, there are adaptors you can buy I think.

Spent $30 on a selection of trademe adaptors, seem to be working:

A couple with reversed 50mm


Spidey by gravelben, on Flickr


Lawn daisy by gravelben, on Flickr

And extra close-up with the 50mm reversed onto the front of an 80-200mm zoom - the spider body is 5mm wide and its head/neck thing is 1mm wide:


closer spider (1) by gravelben, on Flickr

Stamen by gravelben, on Flickr

And the smaller things get, the trickier it is getting them in focus!


Spider Mite (1) by gravelben, on Flickr

Speargrass weevils on a mountain near Lake Ohau:


NZ Speargrass Weevils (2) by gravelben, on Flickr

The photos are looking really cool! Which lens are you using? Do you have a link for the adaptor?