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I know nothing about macro photography; how are photos like this shot?

As in: is it a camera and a macro lens? Or is there some focus stacking and image composition involved? Or perhaps some other approach?




A macro lens is defined as one having 1x magnification, meaning 1cm in real life at the focus plane is mapped to 1cm on the image sensor. A full frame sensor is 3.6cm across horizontally, so a 3.6cm object fills a photo. These things are smaller, so they need a super macro lens with 2x or even 5x magnification. You can get that by buying such a lens, using macro bellows, clipping a separate magnifying lens in front of your normal macro lens, etc.

In any case, with such a high magnification, the plane of focus becomes very narrow, so they're very likely also doing focus stacking.

And you need a lot of light, so they're probably also using a flash.


At least focus stacking these wouldn't be too hard as they aren't moving and not likely affected by the wind!

Definitely using a flash, you wouldn't get that even side/shadow lighting without either (diffused) flash or other added light source


Macro lens + focus stacking according to https://www.barrywebbimages.co.uk/About

Which links to https://amateurphotographer.com/technique/macro_photography/...

And that further elaborates (in the Barry Webb section): "a Micro Four Thirds system with a 60mm macro lens [...] also often use between one and three extension tubes and, on occasions, a Raynox close-up lens" (plus a whole lot more info.)




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