Macro photography is cool, everything small looks better big. I thought the same would be true for food, but surprisingly things often seem to look a bit more disgusting than when they were small, or maybe that’s just how I’ve been photographing them. Despite the extreme expense of dedicated macro lenses, trying out macro photography can be surprisingly cheap.
There are various DIY methods for getting up close to objects, including: bellows, screw on macro lenses and extension tubes. But the most effective for getting seriously close up is to use a reversing ring to mount a standard lens back to front on your dSLR. So after buying a cheap reversing ring, and a seriously cheap kit lens (the mount was broken) on Ebay, I have everything needed to try out some macrophotography:
There are the typical problems of lighting and focus, but these can be solved with a strobe light and some judicious focus stacking, but actually photographing things well at that scale is surprisingly tricky, and takes thinking about things in a quite different way. Here are some first attempts with the random ingredients lying around my kitchen, still a lot to learn!
And if you’re not sure what the macro photos are of:
- Sage leaf
- Sliced raisin
- Azuki beans in sugar
- Kiwi skin
- Sliced chorizo
- Walnut
- Cornflake
- Inside of butternut squash
- Sage leaf
- Dried shiitake mushroom
I think they’re beautiful. Not saying they make me want to eat them – maybe a little. But mostly they’re faaascinating! Well done
I think the reason some of the food products do not look as appetizing is because of your light source. Try natural light and reflectors; it won’t make the food look as greasy and unappetizing. Macro photography isn’t about disguising your subjects, I thought the raisin was an apple or pear chip! Also, look into the details.. is that a blue string attached to the raisin….
Thanks for the tips, in some ways though I like how use of light can make things look totally alien, like the raisin.
PS that was a bit of fluff I couldn’t quite be bothered to Photoshop away, but cool that it was hardly even visible by eye.