Photo Safaris - The Challenge of Closeups

By Wayne Lynch & Aubrey Lang



				Ultimate Antarctica February 2–March 1, 2006
				Spring Fever in Galapagos April 29–May 15, 2006
				Polar Bears & Wildlife of Spitsbergen June 26–July 8, 2006
				Masai Mara Wildlife Reserve, Kenya September 8–22, 2006
				Emperor Penguins of Snow Hill Island, Antarctica October 19–November 3, 2006 and October 31–November 15, 2006

Torres del Paine National Park, in southern Chile, is one of the most beautiful parks in South America. Here, on a morning's drive, you can focus on chiseled mountain ridges capped with ancient snow, savor the curve of a breaking wave along an emerald-tinted lakeshore, capture the prancing gait of a newborn guanaco or target the timeless glide of an Andean condor. All of us on the trip we were leading were primed to capture such photos. But when we awoke that November morning, the clouds were "down on the deck," and a light rain extinguished the last flicker of our enthusiasm. Grumble, grumble, grumble is all we heard as our group trudged to the bus and headed down the road to "make" some photographs. Ten minutes from the lodge, we rounded a curve and the road ahead was flanked on both sides with notro bushes, ablaze with crimson blossoms, soaked in rainwater. At that moment, mountain scenery was out of the question


Imagine this blue damselfly in the middle of a piece of typing paper and you can appreciate how much the field of coverage was reduced. We made this shot with a 50mm lens and a 5T closeup lens. The reproduction ratio is about 1:2, half life size.

so we decided to stop and see if we could "stretch our creativity, and challenge our eyes." Our real intention was to kill some time while we waited for the weather to improve. How wrong we were. For the next two hours, our group spread out and worked the flowers with every possible lens, from every conceivable angle. We searched, examined, discussed and disagreed. It was wonderful. We soon forgot about the grand mountain vistas we knew were hidden behind the clouds. Instead, we luxuriated in the discovery of the simple beauty, in simple subjects. Photography is often a rushed affair, especially with wildlife where you have to grab the shot as quickly as possible before the subject runs or flies away. That morning in Chile we rediscovered the joys of closeup photography. It was relaxing, challenging and gratifying. When it came time to leave, many wanted to stay longer. Some of our most memorable shots from the trip were made that morning in the drizzle when we took time to see what we had not seen.

When we began photography back in the Pleistocene Era of the early seventies, both of us owned a single camera body and a 50mm lens. Our only accessory was a shared 14mm extension tube. Together, with that simple accessory, we discovered


	This second shot was made with a 50mm lens reversed on the front of a 105mm. The magnification is twice life size.

a whole world to capture on film. Closeup photography is appealing for many reasons. It can be pursued anywhere, from your backyard to Borneo, and it's not physically demanding. In fact, closeup photography is a couch potato's dream, and the patience learned from hours of slouching on a couch is good preliminary training. And best of all, the equipment needed for closeup photography is relatively cheap. If you are not already doing closeups, we hope to get you hooked, and if you are, we'll try to expand your ability. Since there is a fair amount of material to cover on this subject, we've decided to discuss the topic in two successive columns; the first in the July/August issue and the second in September/October.

Let's begin with a simple exercise. First, find a standard sheet of white typing paper, 8.5" x 11" in size. Now draw a life-sized daisy on the paper. Next, use all the different lenses (macro lenses excluded) you own to photograph the flower, focusing as closely as you can with every lens. What did you learn from this exercise? (Even though we know none of you did what we asked.) Let's assume you used a 28mm, 50mm, 105mm, and a 300mm to photograph the drawing of the flower. As you changed to higher focal length lenses, the distance between you and the sheet of paper increased, but the image of the daisy stayed roughly the same size in your viewfinder. That's because the field of coverage, roughly equal to a sheet of typing paper, is pretty much the same for all standard lenses from 24mm all the way up to 800mm. For all of these focal lengths, the field of coverage, called the reproduction ratio, varies between 1:7 and 1:9. A


We used a 105mm lens with a 3T closeup lens to take this showy lady's-slipper in Newfoundland. It was raining at the time, and we had to shield the flower to prevent raindrops from moving it.

reproduction ratio of 1:1, called life size, is the area inside a standard 35mm slide mount — assuming, of course, that you are using 35mm film. The objective in closeup photography is simply to reduce your camera's field of coverage to an area smaller than a sheet of typing paper, all the way down to life size, or even smaller. This is the contracted world where the closeup photographer strives to be, and there are two easy ways to get there: closeup lenses and extension tubes.

Closeup lenses, also called supplementary lenses or diopters, screw on the front of a standard lens in the same way that a filter does. You can buy generic closeup lenses, which usually consist of a single lens element and are inexpensive. Unfortunately, most of these are not sharp, especially around the edges of the image. You can minimize this weakness somewhat by using a small aperture, but we would recommend that you use a name-brand multi-element closeup lens instead. Nikon makes four different multi-element closeup lenses. They come in two powers (1.5 and 3 diopters) and two sizes (52mm and 62mm). They are the 3T, 4T, 5T and 6T, and they cost just around $50 each. Canon also makes multi-element closeup lenses in different powers (1.5 and 3 diopters), and different diameters (52mm, 58mm, 72mm and 77mm). The price for the largest Canon closeup lens, the 77mm 500D, is about $135, and the price for the smaller sizes goes down from there. In the end, it doesn't really matter which brand of camera you own. You can attach any brand of closeup lens to any lens, as long as the two diameters match. Even when the diameters don't match, you can use a cheap step-down ring which lets you couple together lenses of different diameters; for example, you can couple a 58mm Canon closeup lens to the front of a 52mm diameter lens, and so on.


	This venomous juvenile cottonmouth was swallowing a dead fish. We used a 300mm telephoto with a closeup lens. The long focal length gave us the working distance we needed not to disturb the snake.

Before you buy a closeup lens you should first consider which lenses you think you will attach it to. Suppose you plan to use a 50mm lens to photograph the daisy you drew earlier on the typing paper. When you focus as closely as you can with that lens, the end of the lens is roughly 24 inches from the surface of the paper. Now add the weakest Nikon closeup lens, a 3T (1.5 diopters, 52mm diameter) to the front of the lens. The combination greatly reduces your field of coverage and you get a much tighter shot of the flower, but now you are just 13 inches from the paper. Suppose you repeat the same exercise using a 28mm lens and a 3T closeup lens. In this case, you get an even larger image of the daisy in the viewfinder, but now your working distance has dropped to just 3 inches.

Working very close to a subject has a number of drawbacks. If your subject has a beating heart, chances are it won't stay around very long when you are less than a foot away. In short, flit goes the butterfly, plop goes the frog. However, if, like Joe Van Os, you live in Washington State, the land of banana slugs, you can get as close as you like to these slimy critters.


We shot the rain-splattered notro with a 300mm and a closeup lens. The telephoto enabled us to move away from the plant a few feet and change our shooting angle to improve the color and texture of the background.

There are others problems to contend with when your working distance is very short. If you are photographing in bright sunlight your shadow may shade the subject. If you use a flash, it is more difficult to position it when the camera is very close to the subject. And finally, at close distances, the heat radiating from your own body can produce enough air turbulence to make some subjects move in the wind. We've seen this happen often when we were photographing dew-covered spider webs in the early hours of morning.

To sum up, lenses in the 28mm to 50mm focal length range can be used with closeup lenses but they create some problems. To get around this, we tend to add closeup lenses to focal lengths in the 70mm to 300 mm range. We use them commonly on the front of our 105mm and 200mm macro, as well as on our 28-70mm and 70-300mm zooms. The 105mm and the 28-70mm zoom are 52mm in diameter, while the other two lenses are 62mm. We use just one closeup lens, the 6T (3 diopter, 62mm diameter) for all four lenses. With the two 52mm diameter lenses, we couple them to the 6T using a 62-52mm step-down ring (Nikon BR-5, Cost $22.00).

There is one last type of closeup lens that we should consider. It's one lens reversed on the front of another lens. Most often we use a standard 50mm f/1.8 lens and mount it in the reverse position on the front of a standard 105mm. To accomplish this, the reversed lens must have the same diameter or greater than that of the master lens. Otherwise, you get vignetting. To attach the two lenses together you need a 52mm male-to-male coupling ring. This costs just a couple of dollars and you can order one from any of the big New York camera stores. Also to prevent vignetting, open the aperture on the reversed lens as wide as possible and set the focus at infinity to make the lens as short as possible.

There are three advantages to using this reversed lens method: POWER, POWER, and more POWER. By mounting a 50mm lens, in reverse, on the front of a 105mm, the magnification is double life size. To calculate the power, you simply divide the focal length of the reversed lens, into the focal length of the master lens. Thus, if you reverse a 24mm on the front of a 105mm you achieve a little over four times life size. With that, you can get a head shot of a housefly.

Of course all this handy magnification doesn't come without some disadvantages. The first of these is the very short working distance. With a 50mm lens reversed on the front of a 105mm, the working distance is just 2 inches, and with a reversed 28mm it is a mere 1.5 inches.

A second problem is the extremely shallow depth of field. As a result, you must use the smallest aperture the lens will provide, either f/22 or f/32. This creates disadvantage number three. Because of the small aperture you must use an electronic flash, since daylight is just too weak to provide enough light. For the flash, you also need a synch cord (Nikon SC-17) so that you can take your electronic flash off the hot shoe of the camera and move it to the front of the lens, where you can aim the flash beam directly at your subject.

Your homework this week is to read this column again and try it out. The best way for any photographer to improve his or her skills is to completely understand how the gadgets work, their advantages and disadvantages. That's it for this month. Next time, we'll discuss how to get closeup photographs with extension tubes.

Questions and Answers

Wayne Lynch and Aubrey Lang will answer readers' questions in their bi-monthly column. They can be contacted via e-mail at this address: lynchandlang@photosafaris.com. Due to the anticipated volume of inquiries Wayne and Aubrey cannot answer questions individually, but they will cover a wide range of topics within each column. The new columns will come on-line May 1, July 1 and September 1. We look forward to hearing from you.



	Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris, Inc. P.O. Box 655, Vashon Island, Washington USA 98070 Phone: (206) 463-5383 Fax: (206) 463-5484 Email: info@photosafaris.com Copyright © 2008, Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris, Inc.