Digital Macro Photography - Defining Essential Functionality for Specific Applications

The various good-quality affordable digital cameras now available offer a considerable range of functionalities for macro photography. Each application or type of subject will have its own set of "must-have" capabilities.

For us, the primary interest has been photographing live moths in low-light conditions and, for some species, getting ultra-close-up photos of very small specimens. Our needs are further complicated because most of our photographs are taken at night and the available (artificial) light is not necessarily a desirable color temperature.

• Flash photography to freeze motion and support more accurate color rendition. The flash duration can range from as little as 1/50,000^th of a second to 1/1000^th of a second, depending upon the amount of light required; ultra-close-up macro photography requires just a very short burst of light. In addition, when photographing under mixed light conditions as we usually do, the electronic flash helps to ensure, or at least improve, faithful color rendition.
• Ability to set the camera for aperture priority, to provide a depth of field sufficient to make as much of the subject as possible appear in focus, moths being three-dimensional creatures that assume a considerable variety of non-flat positions.
• A fully automatic camera-lens-flash combination. When chasing a lively specimen up a wall or up a tree, and shifting from a tiny subject to one as big as your hand, there's no time or opportunity for making adjustments or otherwise fiddling around with the camera settings!

 
 
These four shots form part of a sequence taken within the space of less than a minute, in search of a good illustration of hindwings, as this Catocala ultronia became lively at the east-facing window where we do daytime re-takes of moths captured on the previous evening. Without the fast auto-focus, aperture priority setting, and use of flash to freeze motion, sequences like this would be very difficult, especially with one-handed camera operation (the other hand holding a container to recapture the moth before it got away entirely).

Because we take a lot of photos, and because we are usually constrained to hold and operate the camera with just one hand, a good ergonomic design and manageable weight are also important features.

Each macro photography application or subject will have its own list of essentials. For good still macro photography (of mineral specimens or stamps for example), a tripod is a necessity — but a tripod would be a definite hindrance for photography of live wild moths. For many scientific applications, it's important to choose a camera that can be adapted for use with a microscope. Some applications will require management of multiple flash units, and there are excellent wireless external flash units available. For our purposes, however, we began with the three basic criteria listed above.

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Page last modified 1 March 2008
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