MIC - Macro to Micro

This course looks at the various ways to get close up photographs of small things from looking at the shortest working distances with a range of lenses, at specialist Nikon and other macro lenses, at both Nikon and cheaper close up lenses that attach to other lenses, and utilising tubes and bellows, and combining them. We look at how to use flash, lighting cubes and reflectors and how to stabilise cameras when working very close. We look at economic ways to get involved in this, and allow you to try yourself different arrangements, so you can see the real differences between them.

This can be a day course or can be combined with another. 

Macro photography opens up the ability to photograph items up close and small items, it could be jewellery, insects, or unusual views of everyday items.

We can show you how to use close up lenses and tubes with ordinary lenses including zooms to take close up and macro photographs, how to use an old manual lens for macro, and how to use reflectors, set white balance and deal with the challenges presented by lower depth of field when working so close.

We have two Nikon macro lenses, 60mm and 105mm, close up lenses, tubes, bellows, reversing adaptor, Nikon macro flash kit R1C1, plus additional SB200 flash units SB600 and SB800 flashes, SU800 commander, light cubes, reflectors, and much more, there is just about nothing we cannot photograph. You don't need anything like the amount of kit/toys we have to be able to undertake macro photography, but the chance to use it here is beneficial and allows you to decide what you would use and look often at several different ways to get the same end results.

Macro lens of course can be used for all general photography and are very sharp. The 105mm being a VR lens is particularly useful for flower photography hand held. Similarly the macro flash outfit can be used alongside other flashes as a part of a studio, portrait or product photography setup. 2 of the SB200 flash units will light up our 7ft by 6ft highlight background, similarly the commander unit SU800 has two modes a macro mode and a general commander mode.

Usually people who attend this day course have already been here before and done the hands on a Nikon day, and often also the flash day, so we are often starting by looking over items from before that they want to go quickly over again and looking at camera and flash settings on the camera relevant to macro. We also identify their interests in terms of close up and macro photography and what it is that they would like to be able to achieve while with us.

We then cover the theory, playing with experimental setups as we progress so they get a good feeling and understanding.

On the day over half is available for doing real macro photography, taking a series of photographs, that are each set up, lit and taken before being looked at. Often we will use the creative lighting flash system, often we will run with a tethered camera allowing us to see the results as they are taken on a computer monitor and play with them in an editing program.

Like all of our days this is tailored around your interests and what you want to achieve, and where we can we try to make all the practical as relevant to your interests as we can.

We work throughout the day at table height, but if you have specific challenges at ground level we will show you how to deal with them.

Length of day

We have a version of this day as a short (3 hours). This does not allow us time to go off topic much or look at other areas of interest and practical time is limited.

A 5 hour day could cover this, but the standard 7 hour day is better as it allows you to spend more time making the most of our resources and doing more macro photography, also with the 7 hour day we can show you a few more things that often get dropped from the shorter day to allow progress to be achieved.

This is also a nice day to add as a part of a multi day course, there is more practical, less theory than on many days and you get a great feeling of achievement when you see just what you have managed to do.