National Audubon Society Guide To Nature Photography:

Part Five: The Clsose-up world


For greater magnification, close-up lenses or add-on devices are required. The true macro lens is made to use for high-quality close-up picture taking. it has a focus range that goes from infinity to a close-up distance that yields 1:2 life-size reproduction. These lenses are quite expensive though, which is a big negative, but if you're interested in macro photography a lens like this would be really useful. Some accessories to get for macro shooting would be teleconverters, lens extensions, and close-up supplementary lenses.

Extension tubes and bellows permit varied magnification and produce quality image even at great reproduction, but a bad thing with them are that they reduce the amount of light transmitted by the lens and that will limit the range of stop-action photography under ambient light and it will be problematic when the wind is blowing.

Teleconverters is a good way to increase the focal length of the lens by 2X or 1.4X. You can do this and still keep the full focus range. They work well with telephoto lenses to take pictures of for example butterflies, frogs, and songbirds. Remember if you want edge-to-edge sharpness, stop down one or two stops from max aperture. Put the teleconverter on first on the body, then the extension tube and then the prime lens, if you're using it all.

Telephoto lenses are good because they let you maintain adequate working distance from subjects. They can also be used with telecoverters, extension tubes and bellows, and close-up supplementary lenses. It also works to combine all of them. If you're using a flash in nature, the best position for it is on the camera's hot shoe, but if you want you can put it to the side, above or behind the subject. In nature light illuminates the subject from any direction, but so can also your flash.

It's hard to shoot during mid-day when the sky is clear. Then it's needed to soften the sun's light, and one good way to do that is using a large umbrella of neutral color. This is used set up to block the direct sunlight from hitting the subject of the picture. Then you can use a matt white reflector to bounce the soft light back to the subject and the light will be softer. Doing this will be close to what it would have been like to shoot on a cloudy day.