New stuff going on at work, busy busy. Buying a truck to tow the wife's travel trailer. Shooting pictures like mad .

I got a new macro lens - well, not a NEW one. It's probably CA 1980 or so; the pentax 100mm f4 Macro that appeared in Dentistry dress as well. It really shines on this K20D. Here are a couple of samples (click for larger images):

Macro Tips for DSLR photographers

First, when you're shooting high-magnification (1:3 or better) Macro photographs, you don't focus the lens so much as you focus the camera by moving it closer and further away. This also allows you to control your magnification level critically by setting your macro lens to, say, 1:2 on the lens; you know what the final reproduction ratio is going to be, then.

Second, you must use a tripod or a flash, or both. I tend to use a flash; I have a Vivitar 283 with the manual exposure module and a Lumiquest ProMax Softbox ( a velcro-on camera mount softbox ) that I adjust down until it's just above the top of the lens. It's about 8" wide by 4" tall, and makes for a nice soft shadow (see images above). At the magnification levels we're talking about, only the short exposure created by the flash duration allows me to handhold these shots; even in direct sunlight I couldn't get a sharp image without flash. The nice thing about manual flash for macro is that you set your distance when you pre-focus, then you adjust aperture and flash intensity until you have good exposure and depth of field. Then you have a rig that's a very high-quality, macro-centric point and shoot. You walk up to your target until it's in focus, and fire away. Take three or four of any important shot to make sure you get your focus where you want it. If there's enough light, set your camera to "catch-in-focus" mode, and pick the focus point where the shutter fires when 'in focus'.

Third, know your sensor; do some test shots and find out what the critical limits of sharpness and contrast are. Generally, though, you want to keep your aperture between f8 and f22 inclusive. With my 100mm lens, that's still only about 6-7mm of DOF (see above) at 100% (onscreen actual pixels). DOF is dependent on final magnification of the image, and macro images see massive magnification - that's why we take them, right?