Macro photography tips
1. Check focus
Depth of field becomes really narrow when you are shooting at 1:1 or higher magnification. You have to properly set your camera’s dioptre especially for your shooting eye. Before pressing the shutter, you also need to triple-check focus.
2. Check focus again
If you are using a digital camera, after you caption the picture, check your picture in your LCD screen and zoom the image as much as the camera will be able to since you need to check if your captioned subject is in focus.
3. Eliminate subject motion
Subject emotion is a challenge in shooting a macro photograph and you need to beware of that emotion as it might blur it. For example, when you are about to shoot a flower, you have to make sure there is no even slight wind to mess up your focus.
4. Eliminate camera motion
Especially if you have shaky hands, you might need a mini-pod, a bean bag or commonly a tripod
5. Eliminate background clutter
Normally, a macro photographs highlights at one spot, so you have to get rid of all the busy background so that your image won’t be messed up. Or you can try altering your perspective, make a extreme close-up shot, or use a sheet of plain paper and put behind the subject.
6. Eliminate foreground clutter
If you are trying to shoot through dense forest to catch something eye-catching, you have to make sure there’s nothing is blocking your focus.
7. Eliminate grain and digital artifacts
The sharpness of the image relies on the grain – the more grains, the less sharp of the image. Try using fine-grained film and set the camera at the lowest ISO.
8. Eliminate bland subject matter
Come up with some unusual subjects which will make your images more interesting. Concentrate on colours, shapes and angles and keep experimenting and you will finally get sublimely wonderful shots.