Looks like a bunch of you really got up close and personal with Macro photography this last month. It always baffles me when I get to see a bug in ultra magnification, and they suddenly look like a fun furry pet instead of a gross bug! Here's a handful of my favorites from the photo dumps. I am looking forward to all the coming self portraits for September!
bugs out,
Gear: Canon R6, 35MM f/ 1.8 Macro lens
Settings: 1/200, ISO800, 35mm, manual focus
The Shot: The dragonflies favor three places in our yard. Sometimes the garden but they especially like the dead branches on the peach and nectarine trees. I have found that some are more flighty than others. From my son, I recently acquired a very much needed 35mm; as so it happens the RF version is a macro. I set out this evening checking the trees to give the new to me lens a spin. I wanted to really capture the details of the dragonflies eyes. However, with how hot it has been I had to wait later in the evening and was loosing light. I attempted to shoot at the highest aperture without having to bump up the ISO too high as to avoid grain. I also had to account for wind as well as the dragonflies movement. I dialed into manual focus mode and began shooting at different angles. I have found with some dragonflies need a few shots to get acclimated before I move in really close. Finally, I felt as though this one was going to let me move in, I dialed all the way in on the focus and got in as close as I could.
Post Processing: Lightroom Classic: I wanted to keep the focus of the image to the eyes of the dragonfly, yet make some slight color corrections in the back ground. I increased the contrast then corrected the white balance as I shot in camera a little warm. I needed to also bring balance to the greens, keeping them green, but more to keep the focus of the colors that are transparent through the wings in check. I desaturated the greens by half and the yellows just a little. Shooting with a higher f stop and ISO, I did get some grain. In the derails section, increased the masking (sharpening) and luminance (noise) to reduce the grain. However, this took away some of the details that I wanted to keep on the dragonfly. To remedy and bring them back, I added a layer mask to the subject, removing the noise. On this mask I also decreased the highlights, lifted the shadows and increased the contrast, whites texture and clarity. The next layer mask, I added some was radial to bring a little natural light back in then one on the subject where the sunset was naturally bringing light in from. I still felt I wanted a little more pop on the eyes, therefore I added a final layer mask increasing the clarity. Exported to photoshop, created a layer in which I lightly dodged the midtones of the branch and the eyes as well as dodged the highlights over the “hairs” on the dragonfly and the areas of the wings where light came through. Finally, I created a crop box 1/4th of the images original size then centered the crop box over the dragonfly where I felt the most attention was on its eyes.
Gear: Nikon Z6 50 mm
Settings: ISO 100, 1/640, free lensing
The Shot: standing over my garden
Post Processing: LR SMAL 07, adding saturation, adjusting luminance and contrast
I'm in AWE of the beautiful macros people are posting on here!!! This is my first time trying macro. I have a 50 mm so I'm free lensing and I'm having a hard time getting focus right. All recommendations are welcome!
Gear: Nikon D7500, Tamron 90 mm macro
Settings: ISO 320 f/5 and 1/120 sec
The Shot: Lots of these little guys were flying in my garden so I decide to do some photoshoot with them
Post Processing: I hand edited in LR and PS.
Gear: Canon 6D Mark ii, Canon 50mm 1.8
Settings: ISO 1000, 1/4000
The Shot: I shot this by detaching my lens, flipping it around, and moving it closer to the flower to find focus using a reverse freelensing technique.
Post Processing: I edited this in Lightroom using a Tribe Archipelago preset and adjustments to the HSL panel.
Gear: Canon RP with 100mm Macro
Settings: f 4.5, ISO 2000, 1/1600
The Shot: This stiletto fly was buzzing around our deck in the Poconos, from afar he looked interesting so I ran for the camera. I had to push to 100mm and get as close as I could for the detail. I rested the camera on the deck ledge and slowly creeped up on him. I took this photo and he took off an never saw another the rest of the trip.
Post Processing: Edited in PS- added some saturation to his eyes, added some dodge and burn particularly around background and brought out his color with the dodge to stand out.
Gear: Nikon 3400, nikkor 50mm f1.4 manual lens with a x10 macro ring.
Settings: f8, iso 400, 1/800
The Shot: No special set up other than trying to get as far behind the web as possible to catch the sun in the droplets.
Post Processing: Increased contrast slightly, increased warmth, cropped in a little to highlight the in focus droplets and clarified a bit.
Gear: Nikon d750 and sigma 105mm macro
Settings: f8, iso 2500, 1/2000, -0.7ev
The Shot: I have had this ball of embroidery floss sitting on my desk for months. I just kept looking at it thinking it looked so interesting. I knew I needed to take some macro pics of it. So I took it outside on a mostly overcast day and took some pics. I tried to keep the focus on where the thread swirled together.
Post Processing: edited in LR. I prefer using a matte effect on my macro images so I started there, applying a matte preset. Then I adjusted the magenta hues and saturation. Finally I cropped in a little tighter so you only see the ball of thread and it’s texture. (My macro only instagram can be found at www.instagram.com/macroed !)
Gear: Canon 5d Mark IV, Sweet50 lens and 3 macro filters stacked
Settings: ISO320 F/2.5 1/160s
The Shot: Boop! Captured my pups nose while she was laying next to me as I was photographing flowers.
Post Processing: Edited in LR, SMAL preset, increased texture
Gear: Fuji X-T4, Velvet85
Settings: Aperture around f/4, ISO 160, 1/1000 sec
The Shot: Went down really low in the grass to get one single weed in focus, tried to get the sun on the top to get the flare. Exposed for the highlights,
Post Processing: Used a preset and then tweaked the tone curve to get a little more shadow and contrast. Increased clarity and texture and also warmed it up a little.
Gear: Nikon d750 50mm
Settings: ISO 400, 1/320 ss, f 1.4
The Shot: I don’t own a macro lens so I reversed my 50mm to get this shot. It was later in the day and I noticed a grasshopper sitting on my window so I grabbed my camera. I had to climb up on the counter to shoot it. He stayed for several shots and hopped away.
Post Processing: I took it into LR and used a preset I like and adjusted from there. I thought it needed something so I took it into PS. A few days before I took a few photos of the raindrops on my slider as the sun was going down and I thought this might work as an overlay. I liked the color combination.