Photo fact: Anything photographed up close looks amazing. It doesn’t matter what your subject is, be it a flower, a bumblebee or butterfly, a gemstone, or a slice of apple. Get in close enough and people start exclaiming, “Oooooohhhh…!”
There are many practical reasons for taking close-up photographs. In the case of jewelry, macro photographs are an excellent way to record the details of valuable rings, bracelets, necklaces, and watches for insurance purposes. But practicality is just one reason to focus closer. If anything, most photographers get into macro photography simply for the enjoyment of seeing tiny things in greater detail than is possible with an unaided eye.
What You Need
The best lens for taking close-ups is a macro lens, which is a lens that is specifically designed to photograph objects at life size or greater.
Although macro lenses are typically the sharpest and best-corrected tools for close-up photography, you need not purchase a macro lens to capture visually pleasing close-ups of the world around you. There are numerous inexpensive accessories that enable you to focus close to your subject to take wow-inducing close-up photographs.
Most lenses—including the kit lenses that come with many consumer cameras—can be used for macro and close-up photography. The photographs that accompany this article were taken with my Sony a7R III, now updated in the a7R IIIA, and even though there are many truly fine macro lenses available for this and comparable consumer cameras, unless noted otherwise I restricted myself to non-macro 25mm, 50mm, and 105mm focal length lenses. To get closer, I utilized a selection of basic accessories that enable closer focusing distances for higher-magnification photographs.
How do these macro-alternative accessories stack up against true macro lenses? Some are better than others, and a few options approach macro-lens quality. Depending on how far you stop down your lens, the edges might be fuzzy, or you might notice chromatic aberrations along the breaks between highlights and shadows. These aberrations often make the photograph that much more interesting. Depending on the subject, photographs with blurry, color-smeared edges can be, visually speaking, far more interesting photographs.
Another issue is that unlike true macro lenses, which have flat planes of focus, conventional lenses have curved planes of focus, which is why the edges go soft when photographing flat surfaces at wide apertures. The only way to get sharp edges is to stop the lens down further. Macro lenses tend to have a more even sharpness profile, which is why they are preferred for photographing flat artwork and important documents.
Reversal Rings
The least expensive accessory for dabbling in macro photography is a reversal ring, which enables you to mount your lens on your camera backward. Most lenses act as magnifiers when mounted on the camera reversed. Wide-angle lenses offer greater magnification, but even a reversed 50mm lens can get you quite close to your subject. Although the results can be “dreamy-looking” at wide apertures, when stopped down to small apertures, the resulting photographs can be quite sharp.
Some lens mounts lend themselves better to shooting with reversal rings than others. The best lens systems to use are older Nikon, Pentax, and other lens systems with aperture rings that allow you to stop the lens down manually. Canon EF, Sony E-mount lenses, and some others often lack manual aperture rings, which means you won’t be able to adjust the aperture setting if the lens is reverse-mounted. This is a limiting factor, but the truth of the matter is that fuzzy pictures taken at maximum aperture can be quite lovely.
When you’re using reversal rings, you must set your exposure modes to either Manual or Aperture-priority. Generally, Auto, Program, and Shutter-priority cannot be accessed when reversing your lens.
Close-Up Filters
Close-up filters are magnifying lenses that screw onto the front of your lens like other conventional filters. Typically sold in sets of varying magnification strengths that can be combined for closer focusing, close-up lens filters are similar to reversal rings in that, when used at wider lens apertures, the image quality can be iffy, most notably toward the edges of the frame.
Depending on the lens-filter combination, the image quality of close-up filters can be quite good when used at smaller apertures. Close-up filters do not require any exposure adjustments and can be used in any exposure mode.
Depending on the lens, stacking or not stacking your filters and your working aperture collectively affect the look and feel of the final image.
Extension Tubes
Like reversal rings, extension tubes do not contain glass elements; they are simply tubes. This is a plus because, unlike filters, which can affect the sharpness of your lens, tubes do not affect resolution. By adding distance between the rear element of the lens and the image sensor in the camera, the lens is able to focus closer to your subject than is normally possible.
Like close-up lens filters, extension tubes are sold in sets of different lengths. Extension tubes can be used individually or stacked for additional magnification.
Unlike the other close-focusing options mentioned in this article, extension tubes require additional exposure time, depending on the length of the tube. If you are using the camera’s internal metering system, any light loss is factored into the equation by the camera—not to worry!
Extension tubes are available for manual, as well as autofocus lenses, for all camera systems.
Tripods and Camera Supports
Just as long focal length lenses magnify camera shake, the same magnification of camera shake occurs when photographing smaller objects up close. Depending on your subject, your camera-to-subject distance, and any wind that might be blowing your subject back and forth, whenever possible it is a good idea to use a tripod or similar camera support when taking close-up photographs. The more stable your camera is, the more likely you are to be happy with the results. Even a hint of camera shake is detectable when working at greater magnifications.
One Last Thought
If you’re not a big fan of fuzzy corners, an easy workaround is to use an APS-C or Micro Four Thirds format camera and lenses designed for full-frame cameras. A great deal of the fuzzy matter resides in the outer third of the image field, which is automatically cropped out of the frame when “downsizing” camera and lens formats. By using full-frame lenses on smaller-format cameras you get perceptively “sharper” results.
Macro lens, reversal ring, close-up filter, extension tube, or downsized camera—which of these options appeals to you? Let us know which one(s), and why, in the Comments section, below.
5 Comments
The article says that because extension tubes don’t contain glass elements, they don’t degrade the sharpness of your lens. That’s not quite true: lens designs are optimized for a particular range of subject distances, and their sharpness degrades if they are used at shorter distances. If a great 50mm lens could focus at 100 mm subject distances without losing performance, the lens designer would have built a mount that could reach such distances and sold the lens as a “macro”.
They don’t, because that great 50mm “Summikor” or “Nikicron” wouldn’t be nearly as great in the closeup range as it is at more normal ranges, say half a meter to infinity which is where it was meant to be used. So, indeed, extension tubes do degrade the maximum image quality a lens can deliver.
peter z., thank you for your feedback. We'll take your information under advisement.
I have an excellent macro lens, the Olympus 60mm/2.8 macro for my OMD cameras. But it only goes to 1:1, and once in a while I would like to go a bit larger. What would be the disadvantages of just putting an extension tube on the lens?
You seem to have answered your own question in your comment above.
While an extension tube does allow for greater magnification, the downsides would be reducing in the image quality and a change in the effective aperture.