March 2011

Taking macro pictures from a non macro lens

This is the setup I used to take my pictures in the last post. Nikon D700 was on a mini tripod. I uses 3 day light energy saver as my light source. No flash was used. Day light was used because its temperature is close to natural sunlight.

The main problem is precise focusing at the particular area of interest. Your subject is a small part of your view finder view when you are using a non macro lens. Depth of field is very narrow at macro level so its necessary to focus exactly at your area on interest. It hard from a view finder without a view finder magnifier. But live view with magnification and manual focussing can be very helpful for the exact focus.

Here is the example for the technique.

Step 1, turn you camera to live mode and move the box to your area of interest on the screen. Keep in mind that lens sharpness is best in the central area so try to keep the box near the center and move the lens and camera itself for adjustment

Step 2, magnify and manually focus

Finally do the fine focusing at maximum magnification and take the picture. I didn't have the remote release so i had to switch my camera to delayed timer mode and take the pictures to avoid vibrations. Keep your lens's VR off with the tripod.

See the results below or click here

Nikon 24-120 f/4 macro with Nikon D700, indoors tripod

Tripod pictures are sharper than the hand held ones. Live view was used for the precise focus with manual focusing. The pictures have been cropped to the main subjects

Nikon D700+Nikon 24-120 f4 sample

Nikon 24-120 f/4 macro with Nikon D700, outdoors handheld

Although not a dedicated macro lens but with right technique Nikkor 24-120 f/4 can deliver very good result at macro level. The picture were taken in bright sunlight and camera was hand held. The pictures have been cropped to the main subjects.