How To Take Great Close-Up Photos

Step 6 Setup Considerations

When using the macro setting, the depth of focus gets pretty tight. That means the camera is in focus for a very narrow distance. Anything closer or farther from that target area will be out of focus. In the picture of the tap taken on an angle, the tip of the tap is out of focus, the middle is in focus, and the back end is out of focus. On the picture taken from the side, the tap is in focus for its entire length. You can also see where it loses focus by looking at the specks in the gray pattern. On most cameras, if you partially depress the shutter button, a box will pop up showing you where the camera is focusing. Some settings make this the center of the frame, others use some Skynet artificial intelligence to guess what's the item of interest and focus on that. Make sure the focus box is on the item you want to have in focus.

Comments

[manumanu764]

Nice heavy-duty tool...
I wonder what and how many things I could make a hole on...

[dokcal]

Since we're talking about precision here, let me be totally anal and say that the depth of focus is actually the area where the image stays in acceptable focus behind the lens, at the film plane (or, I suppose, the "sensor plane" on a digital camera!). What you're referring to is depth of field. The two are related, but not interchangeable... and you don't want to look like a doof when you're talking to some snotty guy at the camera store!

[quixotiCfluX]

If you can adjust the aperture (f-stop) of your camera you can adjust the depth of field and avoid this unless it is the effect you are going for. Basically the larger the aperture (lower F#), the shorter the depth of field (more things out of focus around the perimeter) and the smaller the aperture (bigger F#) the longer the depth of field (more of the picture is in focus).

[kc7eph]

To add to this, you can achieve a smaller aperture by having more light. The camera will close the aperture by nature when there is more light to keep the frame from over-exposing.

[jac_goudsmit]

When the camera is in Macro mode, the zoom function is often (always?) used to focus on objects, and the normal manual focus (if it has one) won't work.

[bloomautomatic]

The camera I used for this doesn't have a manual mode, but the zoom function still works as it should. However, if you zoom too much in macro mode, it won't focus at all. since this camera is a point & shoot, it's probably doing what you described internally. vince