As part of my messing with the Button flowers a few nights back, I also tried to get a nice tight macro shot.

There’s a macro competition in the camera club coming up shortly, so I wanted to do things “by the book”. A definition of macro photography being that the image on the film (I’m not sure what this film thing is) should be the same size as the object, but that up to 4 times smaller is also allowed. Now, I’ve no idea how you measure that in Digital world where cropping is so simple, but I decided to work to a simple rule for this shot…

The lens had to be sharp at 1:1 and focused at the minimum focus distance. For this shot I used a Canon EF 100mm F2.8 on my 400D. If you’re in the market for one, I’d recommend it.

To get the shot above, I shot at F/29 from a tripod. You can see that even with an aperture this small, the depth of field is still pretty shallow.

Focusing also required me making use of a Macro Rail for the first time. A Macro Rail is essentially a fine adjustment mount for your tripod and camera. In my case, the rail mounts to my existing tripod mount and then the camera mounts to it. Adjustment is performed along two axis by use of small screws. It’s pretty neat, though I’d suggest the ball mount I have isn’t the right choice for a tripod head in cases like this as the initial set up was a nightmare!