Make Macro Photography With ANY Lenses for FREE !

Hey ! You want to do some macro photography but you don't want to buy a very expensive dedicated lens for it ?

In this instructable I will show you how you can make great macro-photography out of your normal DSLR kit, without buying any extra gear or expensive lens.

You do NOT need to ALTER any of your equipment, this is why this trick is so awesome !

and if you like it, please vote for me in the photography tips contest ;)

here is what you will need.

Material :

- a DSLR

- any lens

-optional : a tripod (really better)

- a computer with a image editor. (like photoshop or the gimp)

-something to take a picture of.

Step 1: How to Proceed : Simple !

You will not believe how simple this trick is !

just take your lens and reverse it in front of the camera body !

you can hold it with your fingers and that's it ! you are done ! I told you it was really simple !

How to Take pictures :

now come the fun part , you've got your subject, you've got your light set up and you've putted your lens in reverse.

- Put your camera on AV mode (but my guess is any mode is ok since there are no lens mounted)

- go onto the live view of your camera so you can see on your screen what you are shooting.

- if you don't use a tripod, adjust the ISO so you can get a speed of about 1/100 or 1/50 of a second so your pictures are sharp and not blured because of your hand shaking.

remember : the smaller the ISO, the better quality your pictures, this mean with a ISO of 100, there will be very little noise, but with a ISO of 3200, no matter how much is your camera body.... there will be noise.. which is why I really advice to get a small tripod.

- now that you have your camera set up, get really close to your subject (few centimeters) and it will appear on your live view. you can now take pictures of it !

-hooray ! you did it ! you took extra close macro photography ! isn't it awesome ??!!

Warning :

you should probably clean your sensor with a special air blower after that. I don't recommend doing it outside, but it is possible.

More explanations:

I just want to add a little precision here, the shorter your focal length, the more magnified will be your image.

this mean that with the 18-55 that come in more kits, you will get more magnified results if you set up your lens on the 18mm mark ;)

You can do More !!:

now you will find that the depth of field is really short, so your images are sharp only on a small area. you can fix this, follow my instructable's next step.

Step 2: Focus Stacking Get Your Macro Photo a Step Further

What is focus stacking ?

Focus stacking is a simple method to get wider depth of field using a computer.

it is a really easy process, all you do is merging multiples photos with different depth of field so you get a much clearer image.

and with today's technology, it is very simple and automated.

How to take the shot:

I recommend putting your subject and its lighting onto something you can slide and move around.

get your camera on a tripod and set up your lens and subject.

- take a first shot, focused onto the front of your subject, on my example, my first shot is focused onto the head of the fly.

- now, slide your subject 1mm back and take another shot, repeat the process, millimeters per millimeters until you reach the end of your subject.

- note: you can do it without a tripod, just by moving your camera around, but I find it much easier with a tripod.

-that's it you are done, on the example of this instructable, i took 8 shots, from head to tail of the little fly.

How to process it into Photoshop ?

1. open photoshop, go on File > Scripts > Load files into a stack

2. Select all the pictures of your photostacking shot. and don't forget to tick the "attempt to automatically align layers "

3. now all your files should appear in the layer panel on the right side, select them all (hold shift and click them)

4. go to edit > auto-Blend Layers, in the new menu, select "stack Images"

-finaly, select all your layers, go to Layers > merge layers

-that's it you are done ! photoshop selected the focused areas of every single image and mixed them all together !

your image look much nicer now !

Note: you can do it with other software, or free software like the gimp, but I do not use them so cannot hel here.

Step 3: Step 3: Go Out and Enjoy !

hope you enjoyed this instructable,

now you can go out in the wild and take awesome macro photo, really really detailed !

if you liked it, you can vote for me in the photo trick contest ;)