Macro photography is one of the most technically bounded genre in the craft of photography, in order to achieve aesthetic macro images you must be in full control with your camera, lights and sometimes with your subject if shooting indoors and the most ardous part is the post processing. Practicing macro photography for commercial use is one of my chore for stock images, during the early years of my trade submitting more or less 200 images in month is not an easy tasked specially if you are not working fulltime with your photography, and out of that 200 images you submitted that you think was the best, you will be dissapointed to know after the review of the agencies that only 30-70 were approved (less than 50%). But that is not always the case, you will eventually learn from your mistakes and improve in the areas you think you are lacking.
1. Always shoot in RAW format (mandatory in Macro Photography)- Your biggest advantage in RAW file format is in post processing that you have 65,536 levels to work with, compared with .JPEG/.JPG that you only have 256 levels available. It means you can have more flexibity in adjusting your images in the highest level of quality.
Dragonfly
Taken with Tamron 90mm f/2.8 1:1 macro lens & Canon 500D
2. Slightest vibration can ruin your macros images- a.)-so never shot without a sturdy tripod, b.) turn-off image stabilizer in your lens, c.) and put your lens into manual mode and learn to focus manually, d.)
always take a lot of photos in different angle of your subjects. (The dragonfly in my shot got almost 60 shots, but only 1 was useable for stock images), e.) use remote shutter release cable or self-timer to take the shot.
3. Set lowest aperture for your lens - start at f/11 to avoid images where some part is blurred or out of focus and other areas were focused (Dept-Of-Field), not unless you want to focus only on the insects eyes.
Thats all. Happy hunting to insects.
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