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As beautiful as they are fragile, butterflies are one of my favorite subjects to shoot –and one of the most difficult to get close to in the wild. I’m often asked how I get so close to them and here is what I’ve learned.

Shoot them when they are distracted.

Like all insects, butterflies are more likely to stay put if they are occupied. Go looking for them early in the morning when they are trying to dry out from the previous night’s dew, feeding, or mating. In the heat of the day they are very active and less likely to let you get close.

Don’t act like a snake.

Predators, like snakes and lizards, move slowly when

Sunny 16 Rule for Macro

Sometimes I like a black background because it helps to isolate the subject -very handy in situations where the background might ruin the shot because there’s just too much going on. But what about those situations where you want to show the subject in its natural environment? When shooting close-ups it’s easy: Just set you camera to shutter or aperture priority and use a little flash for fill (about -1 1/3 to -2 FEC). The range of exposures will be limited by the amount of natural light and the ISO you want to use, but you’ll get even lighting throughout the frame.

But what if you don’t want to be limited by the availabl

Shooting Dragonflies Tutorial

I’ve spent a lot of time at Lago deAverno (Lake of Averno) shooting dragonflies. There are several species of them but the most common is the Violet Darter in the photo. After a while you start to pick up on their habits and quirks, and you learn when you can get close and when you're wasting your time. The trick is to find one that's busy. If they are feeding, mating, or otherwise occupied then they are less likely to fly away. If they do fly off then just freeze -if the dragon comes back to the same spot (or close to it) then try again. If the critter lands several meters away from you then look for a new subject to shoot.

If you try

Macro Technique Tutorial

I’ve been asked a couple of times to do a tutorial on macro photography, and I’ve given a few "quick and dirty" explanations on various forums. But it’s easier to write about it formally in an article and just point someone to a link. So here goes :)

Disclaimer: I am not the last word, nor in my humble opinion is anyone the last word, on any photographic discipline! There are many different ways to take a photo, and I really don’t think that any technique is inherently wrong -just different. In this article I’m going to explain how I shoot macro and hopefully there will be something that you can use. The important th

Shooting Bees Tutorial

If you’ve read my other posts on shooting insects (Shooting Dragonflies: Link and Shooting Butterflies: Link ) then you can photograph the majority of the critters out there. But there are a few more useful tips that I can give you for shooting bees that are different than photographing other creatures so I’m listing them here.

Bees feed in a predictable pattern, both in the area that they are in and on the flowers that they get nectar from. If you see a bee feeding on a flower and it takes off odds are it will be back later (or one just like it). Honey bees communicate the location of the food sources that they discover, so if the

Closeups in Harsh Light

Often I find myself shooting in less than ideal conditions and if I waited for perfect weather or light I’d rarely get a chance to shoot, so one of the things that I wanted to teach myself was how to photograph insects using a mix of natural light and flash. Since portrait photographers often under expose the ambient light in a scene and then use a flash to expose the subject I thought that would be a good place to start. After reading several examples at Strobist (a site that you should all be reading as well) I set out to play. This is what I’ve learned so far…

The trick is to keep the sun at an angle that's either to the si

Frozen in Time Tutorial

I while back I experimented with water dripping from my kitchen sink, and I did a lot of reading about high speed photography. Even though I really don’t have the equipment to do it “the right way” I wanted to see what I could do, and maybe learn something more about flash photography. What I found out was not what I expected.

I’m going to tell you some things that might sound counter intuitive…

The goal was to take a photo of a water drop in front of a flower and the get the flower’s refraction in the drop. The setup is easy: Just punch a hole in a piece of heavy paper big enough to feed the stem of the flower

MT-24EX Users Guide

Due to the number of questions I’ve received I feel the need to do a step by step guide on how I set up and use the MT-24EX. But before I dive in there are a few things that you need to understand…

I’ve spent a lot of time experimenting with the MT-24EX and looking for a way to get the light I want from a flash that, out of the box, is really harsh. I started by learning how a flash works from reading the HiViz web site and reading the tutorials at Strobist like Aperant Light Size. There is a huge difference between getting good results with a flash and understanding how you’re getting the light that you’re seei

Dragons In Flight Tutorial

Given the choice I’d much rather shoot dragonflies on the ground, but there are some species that always seem to be in motion when I’m out with the camera. After a few attempts at shooting them in flight, and a lot of trial and error, I found a way to take shots of airborne dragons that seems to work pretty well –at least for me ;) Hopefully there will be something in this tutorial that you can use or adapt to your own style of shooting.

I don’t have a high end camera so my 40D only has nine auto focus points. Since I’m into composing with the view finder and will not allow myself to crop there never seems to be a us

Canon's MPE-65mm Macro Lens

Another one of those frequently asked questions that I get is about Canon’s MPE-65mm macro lens. There doesn’t seem to be very much information on the web about it –even Canon’s own web site gives very little details. So if you’re curious about one of the best pieces of macro equipment on the planet then keep reading…

The MPE-65 doesn’t really have a focus ring -it is always focused at the maximum magnification that you have it set to and there is no infinity focus. No auto focus either –not that it would really do you any good anyway. The depth of field is so thin when shooting at life size and higher

Left Hand Brace

I've put off writing this tutorial for a while because the technique I'm going to describe falls into a category that I call a "cheap trick" but it's so useful and results in such razor sharp images that I felt it was time to commit it to words. Even though I stumbled onto it on my own I'm sure that I didn't invent this technique -it's probably as old as macro itself.

I do all of my macro hand held (the critters I go after are normally too active for a tripod to be practical) and I'm always looking for a way to brace the camera. I don't crop and composition is important (keeping the camera steady helps me to place the critter where I want it

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Canon 500D Filter Tutorial

by *dalantech, May 7, 2008, 10:47:31 PM
Resources & Stock Images / Tutorials / Photography

In one of the conversations that I had with Mark Plonsky he mentioned that he had used a 500D close-up filter with his 100mm macro and liked the bokeh that the close-up filter produced. Since I had been having problems with isolating the subject in the areas where I shoot, and I hate spending time in Photoshop doing things with the computer that I could be doing with the gear, I decide to give the 500D a try.

Mark, as usual, was right -the bokeh is excellent!

The 500D does take a little getting use to. I don't think that it gives me less depth of field, but it seems to compress the area of focus in the sense that a scene goes from being in sharp focus to being completely out of focus over a shorter distance. The area of sharp focus is the same as not using it, but the area between sharp and blurry is reduced -if that makes sense. Take a look at the background in the image with this post. I shot that female Violet Darter in a peach orchard, but all you see is a diffused sea of green due the way the 500D smoothes out the background.

There is no loss in image quality -period.

The 500D is designed to correct for chromatic aberration and it helps to keep the image circle sharp and, unlike an extension tube, there is no loss of light. The magnification that I get with the close-up filter is almost the same as a 25mm extension tube (1.375x for the 500D verses 1.39x for the 25mm tube). Given the choice between using the 500D and a teleconverter I'll take the close-up filter. But there is one problem...

Don't use a teleconverter with the 500D.

Stacking tubes between the camera and the lens with the 500D is no problem (I've taken a lot of images above 2x with the 500D and tubes), but I wouldn't recommend using a teleconverter with the close-up filter -way too much glass and there is no increase in working distance.

Since I was using the 500D on a prime lens the maximum focusing distance is reduced to 1/2 of a meter from the front of the lens (about 18"). The minimum focusing distance varies with the prime lens that the 500D is attached to, and for Canon's 100mm macro it's about 13cm (5 1/4").

With a telephoto lens the way a 500D affects the working distance and focus is completely different. If you're finding it difficult to get sharp images of critters close to the lens then it might not be your technique, it may just be the glass.

Most telephoto lenses are soft at the minimum focusing distance of the lens -by design. The primary use for a telephoto is to take images of distant subjects, so they are built to be sharp when focused toward infinity.

One way around the limitation is to use a close-up filter (like the 500D) since it will fix the focus at about 1/2 of a meter (approximately 18 inches) from the front of the lens. Since the focus is fixed (the focus ring will only change the area of sharp focus by about a centimeter or 1/2 of an inch) you can set the focus ring toward infinity and the resulting images are pretty sharp. The focal length of the lens changes the magnification, so to get "closer" to the subject all you have to do is zoom in. It sounds like it would be a pain to use, but once you get comfortable with it it's pretty easy to guess just how close you need to be to get to the subject in focus. One added benefit that I've found is when shooting butterflies -often I can get sloe to them, but once I stop moving I can't get closer to them without scaring them off. With a 500D on a telephotos lens I don't have to get close to get more magnification -all I have to do is turn the zoom ring...