articles/Nature/extrememacro-page1

Extreme Macro - part 1 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

by Mike McNamee Published 01/10/2010

Themes for articles sometimes build from unlikely sources. While casting about for some sure-fire, weather proof projects for a teaching course, we had occasion to rebuild and recommission a dark field illuminator. More on the technique later, but for starters it guaranteed an ability to make macro nature shots regardless of the weather outside (which turned out particularly useful as it was pouring down and not an insect in sight!).

The dark field technique was described back in May 2007 so it is timely to repeat it. For the first time ever we also include a DIY project in Professional Imagemaker in keeping with a general maxim of macro photography that what you do with the BacoFoil and Blu-Tack is often as important as the latest fancy camera or lens!

There are a number of issues to overcome in pursuit of higher magnification macro work, by which we mean from 1x magnification to about 10x:
1. The depth of field is vanishingly small, measured in fractions of a millimetre.
2. There is an extreme sensitivity to vibration.
3. The working distances in front of the lens are very small, often less a than a centimetre.

Control of the shooting environment is thus essential and, if the subject is also live, control of the subject is also essential. Subjects such as butterflies are live, wild and free, and almost impossible to image at greater than 1x magnification; you can only just cope on a very calm day with a receptive subject.

Getting higher magnifications than 1:1 becomes progressively more difficult with the problems already described but one thing that does not rocket out of control is cost. There is a thriving second-hand market and microscope accessories are less expensive than ever (and almost universally made in China these days). By way of example, a 4x microscope objective only cost £37 brand new!

Subject Control

Control of subjects becomes progressively more difficult until eventually only morbid (dead) specimens can successfully be imaged. Ultimately they may also have to be sandwiched between a microscope slide and a cover glass in order to get them flat enough to cope with the narrow depth of field.

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• Extreme Macro page 7
  

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