The opportunity for ongoing personal experimentation is one of the things that I’ve come to love about digital photography. I did a quick scan through some YouTube video titles after doing a search for ‘photography techniques’. I was not surprised to find numerous videos trying to disseminate ‘must do’ advice.
When I dug a little deeper by searching ‘macro photography techniques’… the videos seemed to become even more dogmatic about following specific techniques at the exclusion of all others.
NOTE: Click on images to enlarge.
To varying degrees we can learn from the techniques and approaches used by other photographers… and perhaps find some inspiration for our own work. Danger arises when we follow others slavishly and fail to explore our own potential, and that of our camera equipment. This can lead to us becoming creative clones who only mimic the work of others… but don’t push our own boundaries.
I assume that if you are reading this article, the concept of personal experimentation is one of your core principles… and that it guides your photographic journey.
Pushing limits… both personal and that of our camera gear… is at the heart of creative growth. As we strive to reach our personal limits there will be failure along the way. And, those moments of failure should be celebrated. If we don’t fail often… we are not pushing ourselves and our camera equipment sufficiently.
Sometimes there can be a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment even when a resulting photograph, like the spider image above, is not great from a quality standpoint. The challenge of doing the best we can under specific circumstances can have its own rewards.
The spider in this image was buried in some dense foliage… so I had to navigate the front of my lens past twigs and other obstructions. It was skittish… as spiders often are… so the process of getting close enough to capture this photograph took some patient, incremental handheld movement.
Given the available lighting I decided to push my E-M1X to ISO-12800. My M.Zuiko STF-8 Twin Macro Flash was not mounted on my camera/lens as the space available to capture this spider image was too restricted.
Sometimes we are told that we “can’t” use a specific camera beyond a particular ISO value. Or, we “can’t” stop a lens down beyond a certain aperture. Or, that all macro images “must” be captured with a flash using a large diffuser.
While all of these shooting parameters could make practical sense under certain conditions… they can also serve as unnecessary restrictions that can limit our photographic potential… and inhibit our creative instincts. Unnecessary restrictions created by others are present not only with macro photography, but also with other photographic genres as well.
Personal experimentation can confirm our individual skill limits, or the technological limitations of our camera equipment. For example, some photographers would not shoot handheld macro photography with the M.Zuiko MC-20 teleconverter in combination with the Digital Teleconverter in their camera body.
For their specific purposes, the resulting images may not be acceptable from a quality standpoint. This is understandable as our image use can directly impact our technique and the technologies we employ.
Personal experimentation can be a cornerstone of our creative journey, and our growth as photographers, regardless of the camera format, or brand, that we use.
There are times when personal experimentation may lead to us trying approaches just to discover what will happen. Like using a small sensor camera to capture a handheld macro image with a two times teleconverter. Using an aperture of f/22. And, shooting at ISO-6400. Whether the resulting photograph is acceptable from a quality standpoint is dependent on our image use, and our expectations.
Some folks may find fault with this approach, while others may determine that they can expand the parameters of how they use their camera gear. That’s the beauty of personal experimentation. It is indeed… personal.
Technical Note
Photographs were captured handheld with the camera equipment noted in the EXIF data, and using single point auto-focus. All images were created from RAW files or out-of-camera jpegs using my standard process in post. This is the 1,400 article published on this website since its original inception in 2015.
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Well said thomas,
My latest gig is using my EM1.3, 300mm f4 and doing astro shooting on a star tracker. Last night I was up till 3am shooting 200 photos at 30 seconds apiece. Then had to shoot 200 dark photos at the same exposures. Then bias files and then flats. After all that, I safely got the photos stored on the laptop. The next morning, after my magic processing, the photo was just ok.
But I learned a ton! One is the location of my backyard makes it difficult to align to Polaris, the north star. The other is exposure times, ISO, and f stop.
I also blew out my lower disc in my back so that needs to be taken into the equation as I can’t stand very long. All in all it was an excellent learning experience and am looking forward to the next “experiment”
Cheers!
Hi Randy,
Thanks for sharing some of your recent photographic experimentation! It continues to amaze me what some folks are able to do with their camera equipment.
Tom
Tom,
I am surprised by the depth of field at 360mm and more. Did you use focus bracketing or focus stacking?
Hi Jack,
No focus bracketing or focus stacking was used. I did stop my lens down quite a bit. If you have a look at the distance to subject this may have helped with increasing the depth-of-field for some of the images.
Tom