Dealing with the background

I mentioned in the first section how depth of field can be a problem in macro work. Because once you get into macro, it becomes very difficult to get enough depth of field even to get a whole bug in focus. But that can work to your advantage too. All you have to do is get some distance between your subject and the background and macro’s tiny depth of field will suddenly start working for you, blurring your background into a beautiful clean sheet of colour. So how do you do that?

Have a look at my drawings here to get an idea.

In the first drawing (above), the background is going to be about the same distance away as the subject. So the background is going to either be in focus, or close enough to it. Unless that background is really necessary for the shot then chances are it’s going to compete with the subject for attention.

In this next drawing (above), the background is, well, in the background. Because it’s difficult enough to get a whole bug in focus, then something a few feet away or further is going to be reduced to nothing more than a blur, ensuring that it won’t compete for attention with all the sharp details of the subject. So look for opportunities to put some distance between the subject and the background. That can often come from simply photographing it from a different angle.

This photo of a Jumping Spider was taken in the middle of the day. Notice that the background has gone black.

When you combine f/16 and 250th of a second exposure, everything except those few objects within reach of the flash will probably be underexposed. That’s why the background goes black.

Black background

Okay, so you’ve got the background separated out from your subject, but it’s gone black. What’s going on?

The problem is that the flash is only throwing enough light to illuminate your subject. The rest of the shot is being badly underexposed by 250th second at f/16. If the flash was bright enough to illuminate the background, then your subject up close would be badly blown out (overexposured).

Putting the camera on a tripod will allow you to keep that f/16 aperture for your depth of field, while also having a much slower shutter speed to expose the scene better.

So how do you get around that?

The easiest way is to find a bug in front of a brightly lit background. If that’s not going to happen then maybe it’s time to unpack the tripod.

Tripod

Using a tripod lets you go back to the kind of shutter speed necessary to get the background properly exposed while still keeping that small f/16 aperture for your depth of field. Okay, we might not want the background to be in focus, but we might not want all your photos to look like they were taken at night either.

Here’s your chance to find a nice, even background that is lit front-on with good light. In such ideal conditions as this you might be able to get away with hand-held shots but otherwise your camera will find this new setup to its liking.

Keep your aperture at about f/16, but you don’t need to be in manual mode any more. You can go to Aperture priority (or whatever your brand of camera calls it) and allow your camera to choose the right shutter speed for the shot. Your background will still be blurred, but it will no longer come out black.

Getting the camera down at the critter’s level will often put the background into the distance, blurring the background so much that it no longer competes with the subject. This is a trick which works with other types of photography too

Not using the flash

And if you’re using a tripod, then you might not need to use the flash either. This is where the beautiful light first thing in the morning can produce wonderful macro photography, when the light has a rich golden quality, and the bugs are still cold and slow from the night. I personally believe natural light is the most beautiful. With the light coming from behind you and a slower exposure, macro without flash can produce some of the best results of all.

Camera vibration

I said earlier that when you’re taking macro shots, the slightest camera shake can produce a blurred shot. That becomes even more noticeable with longer exposures. Okay, you’re using a tripod to help, but the mechanical bits of the camera can cause some vibration too.

A bright sky will usually be enough to match the foreground illumination of the flash

Cable release

I use a cable release when I do tripod work. It prevents my trigger finger from shaking the camera. But if you don’t have a cable release, use a delayed (timer) exposure. Chances are your camera will allow you to expose the shot some seconds after you touch the shutter button, allowing the camera time to stop vibrating.

Mirror lock-up

If you want to be really fussy, then mirror lock up is now your friend. What that means is, in regular digital SLR photography, a mirror flips out of the way to focus the image away from the viewfinder and onto your sensor. Then it flips back to aim at the viewfinder again. That movement can cause a very slight shake of the camera and in very fine macro work it can cause a little bit of blur. Look up your camera manual about mirror lock up — it allows you to bypass that mirror flipping part and ensure a nice, smooth shot. Some cameras enable that by switching to live view mode.

Live view mode

A lot of the newer digital SLRs have a feature called Live View Mode. What that means is, you compose your image on the screen on the camera rather than by looking through the viewfinder. I think it’s a matter of preference as to how you like to work, and LCD screens can be difficult to see properly in daylight. But Live View Mode can often allow you to ‘zoom in’ on part of the subject to check small areas of focus and so that that can come in mighty handy for fine macro work.

Sometimes the background is correctly exposed but also just plain ugly.

Using a second tripod to hold your subject allows you to take it away from the ugly background.

Ugly backgrounds

Here’s where I’m being a bit sneaky. You’ll see in the picture at right that sometimes you get a really ugly background behind your subject. Now, I mentioned in the first article how I’d found a use for my cheap old lightweight tripod. And there it is in the second picture at right. I’m now using the second tripod to hold my subject in a nice place away from the ugly background. Everything is just where I want it. I won’t pretend I invented this trick. A lot of the experts use methods like this. The thing to remember is, very early in the morning the insects, being cold-blooded creatures, are slower to react to someone carefully moving the plant stem, the one to which they are clinging, to a more convenient spot. Now, my old tripod was not much good for holding anything heavier than a lightweight compact camera. But it’s fine for holding a plant stem with a bug on it! It was great to find such a handy use for that thing.

This clothes-peg thing sitting on top of the old tripod cost me nothing, but does a great job at holding plant stems in front of my macro setup

If you want, you can buy clever thingies that turn the head of a tripod into something that holds a clamp, but you can save some money by doing it yourself. Some of the best professional photographers I know solve problems with tape and wire and cardboard instead of spending more money. In the picture at right I show you how I spent nothing making my device out of some stuff lying around the house. You’ll see that it’s just some cardboard, tape and a clothes peg mounted on top of the old tripod. The screw which normally holds a camera onto the tripod screws into the cardboard instead and that clothes peg holds the plant stem. And because it’s sitting on a camera tripod head, I can make it go up or down or rotate it or whatever I want.

It would be possible to write entire books about macro photography, and of course lots of photographers have done just that. There are heaps of techniques and tricks that will enhance your work and this beginners’ series just does not have time for all of them.

So consider this as just the start. If you follow some of the things I’m talking about you should hopefully be improving your ratio of macro keepers. Now you just have to go hunting for some interesting bugs.

PART 1 | PART 2

Beginners’ series on digital SLR photography

 

Other photography stuff

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