Macro in the forest: Tips, ideas and lighting tutorial for amazing photography
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- Опубліковано 21 лип 2024
- In this week's video tutorial, I show the ideas, tips and tricks I use for taking amazing macro on location in the forest. I explain what I look for, the gear I take with me and the lighting techniques I use to capture beautiful close up photos.
Want to know my top tips for macro? Check out this video: • Macro photography tuto...
Want to take and edit great macro photos in your own back garden? Check this out: • Macro photography in y...
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#Macro #Photography #Tutorial
This was delightful. I love the side-lighting technique. Thanks for this. Have subscribed. 🦘👍
Thanks Peter, really appreciate the kind words!
As someone who is about to embark on a macro photography journey, your channel and videos have been algorithm-ed at just the right time. Great videos and thanks for sharing.
Thanks for sharing Andrew.
The great thing about macro is that you can spend an hour on almost every squaremeter in the forest. It's just a question whether you want to spend the time and not about missing subjects, light or whatever made up argument to not take photos. Thanks for reminding me to that.
Love your different view of things. Most of us could walk for hours and complain there was nothing to photograph.
Thanks so much, Tom!
Just a note to some of the comments below regarding lighting, when taking images in woods with low light I take a car windscreen sun protector thingy, the type that reflect sun sun so you car doesn't become to hot, there are two reasons for this, one is that when lying on the ground you don't get wet, two you can always use it to reflect light onto your subject, it concertinas down to about 6 inches by 14inches and can easily fit into most bag, I pick mine up at the end of summer for a few pound from the local supermarket, also I do use LED lighting and it offers softer light than the speed light, just my thoughts and thought I would share...have fun
Richard you absolute champ, that's a cracking suggestion! Hadn't considered that. I frequently take small reflectors out but hadn't considered one that also doubles up as a nice knee protector! I'll definitely give that a go and will credit you with the idea if it goes in a video!
Haha, I use that too! Perfect for both laying down on the ground, and for reflect light 👍
I have modified one by removing the original material and replacing it with thin white, nearly transparent cloth to make a sunlight diffuser. It works really well if the light is patchy and contrasty.
D
Locdwac c. V
Really enjoyed the video and the helpful tips, made me smile to hear you say how you can drive other people mad when you stop every 30 seconds to take a photo or stop to look at something, I am exactly the same and much prefer to go out on my own so I can relax and spend as much time as I like getting fully in the zone
I love your moody green/brown edits, some of the best I've seen.
Fabulous, well done Andrew 👏
Nice video Andrew! It is a great help!
Thanks for the inspiration. Good ideas too.
cracking images, keep up the good work Andrew
Thanks for encouraging videos you are uploading. It tempting even meto venture out with my camera. Thanks a lot
I’m super late to discovering this video but thank you so much for this. It’s exactly what I was looking for.
Perfect...❤
Just watched your video, interesting, thank you. I do a huge amount of macro with fungi, but always nice to see someone else doing it.
Great lessons
Awesome 😎
Very very well done, not only did i like the video i loved the photos! Informative and hit home subscribe and thumbs up for this guy
Great macro shots! Wow :) I really loved to see how you get to those amazing detailed photographs.
I just started in shooting macro and those are some amazing tips (which eyplain a lot why my photos dont look as good ;) )
Just discovered your channel. Thanks, UA-cam algorithm!! ...and thank you, Andrew. Now I need to watch a few more of your videos to learn more about macro photography and processing.
Thank you so much for watching, and indeed thanks to the algorithm for pointing you this way! I hope you find plenty of useful info here and you stick around in the future! All the best with your macro shots!
Amazing job.
Well, now I have weekend plans in the woods. Just found your channel and enjoyed it.
Nice photos & presentation :)
Inspiration for my small UA-cam channel you're good at macro you're good at it
I like how you capture the little things, you make them stand out in a special way. Great view! New subscriber :)
👍no.1👍👍👍👍👍🙏
Amazingly and beautiful video
That was a very enjoyable 10 minutes. Striking photos as always Andrew.
Thanks so much, Tom, really appreciate it!
Love the use of lighting. May need to take more walks and experiment with that.
Thank you!
I thouroughly enjoyed this video and you seem to have such a nice and soft, warm, positive and pleasant personality.
Really beautiful images as well.
Thank you so much for such a kind message!
Great video. What's the softbox you use on the Godox AD200 please?
nice use on ligting.
your channel is absolutely amazing, i love macro photography as well
Thank you so much!!
This was great! Thanks for the inspiration!
Thank you for watching!
Great images. I like the editing of the final images they really have a nice look and feel to them.
Thanks so much, Simon!
Thank you for some early autmny inspiration 🍁😄
Thank you for watching, Frank!
Another brilliant video well done
Thanks Mark!
Hi there, what backpack are you using there, I really like the camo green colour. Gr8 vid.
Lovely work. I'm off to try some of your techniques.
Thank you! I hope you find some wonderful shots!
Very nice video, but i hope you'll make another video how you edit those photos.. the output are so amazing and i really like that dark background..
wow, amazing pictures!
Thanks so much, David!
Lots of great tips without stating the obvious "my 5 top tips" very nice.
Thanks Hugh, I really appreciate it!
@@AndrewLanxonPhotography not at all. I think it was really slick of you to show some great tips without saying so. Perhaps this could be a emerging theme of your future videos.
The POV/B-roll/piece to cam approach you used in the video meant the viewers were taken along with you into the experience of photographing fungi in the forest. Your exposures and particularly the compositions along with the use of the dedicated macro lens have given me food for thought.
I have been out trying to photograph the fungi locally these past weeks but have not been making any great images. I use a telephoto lens but I am aware this approach has it's drawbacks. I have macro a lens for my Aps-C but not my full frame camera. I know now it is time to invest in some new dedicated glass. Many thanks.
wow thats cool
I love flash photography especially multiple flash
Hi Andrew good stuff!! which lens did you use again? also i you had to choose between 105mm F2.8 EX DG OS HSM Macro and venus laowa 100mm f/2.8 2x ultra macro apo lens for canon rf which one would you choose please?
Lovely shots. Guess I should invest in some speed flash light as well. :)
You do pretty much what I do although I use an LED panel that I hover next to the subject whilst taking the shot. Some of those mushrooms grow in the darkest of areas so without the artificial light I would be lost.
SUPER KOOL VIDEO
I find a beanbag more comfortable to use than a tripod, especially for mushrooms
Yup, they can be much easier to work with. I often end up baling my coat up and using that like a beanbag. As long as it's not too muddy!
Hey, Andrew. I've been watching a few of your videos and it's definitely food for thought. I like your style. I was wondering, how do you achieve this deep green effect in your photo?
Thx
Well focus stacking on mushroom shots! I hope you make an episode on edible mushroom hunting! But very usefull. I think your vids could use better quality (some over exposure and soft focussing) but otherwise very well done. Just found it now. Good luck on future mushroom hunts. From Norway.
Great shots, I'm off to my local forest now to see what I can get.
Thanks Marc! Good luck with your shots, I hope you get some great ones!
Thanks for a great little video. I loved the photos of toadstools. I should take your advice and use a tripod for macro sometimes.
Thanks John! It's definitely worth experimenting with of you haven't before. I don't always use it, but there are some shots that you really need it for and if I didn't have one with me I would miss the opportunity.
Lovely photos. If you don’t mind me asking, what tripod are you using in this video?
Thanks again
Hey there just discovered your videos, really liked this one.
Thanks, Shaun, I really appreciate that!
Absolutely stunning images and cinematography. I picked up a used Sigma 105mm f2.8 Macro towards the beginning of this year and have used it very little as I didn't find a whole lot of insects interesting in my garden, I'm hoping to take and pass a CBT to drive a motorcycle to twenty drive forest. That said I recently saved up and got an Speedlite 600EX-RT used for an incredible deal but I've been having trouble figure out how to combine my light properly. I picked up a diffuser box and has made the lighting better but I just can't figure out how to light my targets nicely, they're either too dark or too bright. Do you have any suggestions? Cheers.
Hey there Michael, the 600EX is great, so well done there. I've just done a video on my lighting techniques for macro so you should take a look at that. But it's all about balancing the flash power with the ambient light. My advice is to get your settings right without the flash (ISO 100, your preferred aperture and whatever shutter speed you want to capture enough ambient light) and then dial the flash power in bit by bit until it's where you want it. Remember that moving the flash closer to your subject will make the light look more powerful so keep it one place when you're figuring out your settings. If you then move it further away, increase its power. It can be a steep learning curve, but once you get there you'll love it!
Can you do a tutorial video with tips of how you edit (color grade) your photos?
Hi, for this kind of photography better will be this small softbox, or Magsphere ? I seen You use both, but with one is worthed to buy?
what camera and lens did you use?
Autumn mushroom and moss photography.
Ah man, another channel to binge... thanks YT for never letting me have "free" time from discovering new photographers to follow. :D
Well thank you to UA-cam for bringing you here! I hope you enjoy it!
Hi Andrew what a great idea. I love shooting macro in the woodland but always struggle with the lighting. The image that was sidelit (c8:25) looked amazing. I'm definitely going to try taking some myself
Thank you so much, Paul and best of luck with your next shoot!
New subscriber here,beautiful video! Enjoyed it very much.
Thank you so much!
Just found your channel. I have really enjoyed it and have subscribed
Thanks John, a pleasure to have you as a subscriber!
Macro photography really is interesting with how when you get into it, you can literally just be crawling on the forest floor taking photos of subjects as if you were a child following a trail of breadcrumbs. Do children do that? I feel like children do that.
How about working with a video light? Can that be good too? A good flash is expensive.
Thanks for the video. What softbox was that that you used with your ad200?
Thanks Mike! It was just a generic collapsible softbox from Amazon. There are quite a few available and they're very cheap but make a big difference in the photos!
As my knee is preventing lomg walks … at last slow down and enjoy the pace of macro
Reacting on bring your own light, I always carry a small torch and some metallic paper in my bag. Working on a tripod thats enough tin most situations, no flash needed
Enjoyed this, Andrew. One little mention of yours right at the end. I've never taken to flash photography, apart from the occasional use of my pop-up flash but had recently found something not too expensive that I can experiment with. So the parts at the end where you were using a flash gun and trigger......... you said it was "probably about five or six different shots". Are you talking about the different possibilities - and different shots - or were you going for some 'focus stacking'?
Hello there Geoff, thanks so much for watching. I encourage you to experiment with flash in your photography as it can really transform a scene! It's been one of the biggest learning curves for me -- particularly in my commercial product photography -- but it's been great fun to experiment with too. The shot at the end was for focus stacking, so those five or six shots all had exactly the same lighting setup, but moving my focus point. My most recent video actually shows the edit process for that image and shows the individual raw files I use to build up the final image. Worth a watch if you want to see that process. I hope that's helpful and thanks again for getting involved!
@@AndrewLanxonPhotography Thanks Andrew, understood now..... after being a big user of Lightroom for several years, I'm about to give Affinity a go and that has Stacking and Merging etc. in its options. And.... I know a few places with flat ground (pre-Covid I usually photographed up the South Downs - but my back now tells me it's had enough of that). Fungi will be just the thing for me (again). So, now I'll be looking for a cheap and cheerful flashgun and trigger..... haven't found a mini softbox light like yours yet.
amazing shots
Thank you so much!!
Cheers 🙌
What diffuser are you using on the flash? Can you alter the amount of diffusion to soften the light even more?
Hey! On these images I was just using a basic collapsible softbox. It doesn't allow you add more diffusion to it, but you could always shoot through an additional diffuser (the inside of most 3-in-1 reflectors have a diffuser panel you can use) to add more should you want to.
Enjoyed this, but would have liked to see how you focus stacked the mushroom. I just can't get my head around focus stacking, whenever I try it turns out to be a disaster. I think its one of those things whereby when it does click and you get the hang of it, you can't understand why you thought it was so difficult.
Hey Sherry! I have another video on exactly this topic. It was the one I posted just after this one so it should be easy to find. I hope it helps!
What is lens parameter?
Just stumbled across this video and certainly planning on getting out in the Woods soon as I certainly love Woodland and Nature photography already. One of the key bits of equipment I feel I have been missing is a dedicated Macro, especially for these flat overcast days, and I have just ordered the Sigma 105mm :) I used to own a Tamron with 1:2 macro but it was so slow at focusing I upgraded to a Nikon 70-300 but of course lost the Macro facility. Really excited to take this lens out for a test drive and this video has certainly inspired me to try a few things out...Fungus project coming up I think :) Great tips about the flash, would an LED light work as well as a speed light?
Great purchase! And the best time of year to pick up a good macro lens. As you say, it's great to try out on overcast days when landscapes look all grey and lifeless. I'm sure you'll get some great stuff with it. LED light can work really well to give an extra bit of light, but they're nowhere near as powerful as a speedlight so they can be more limited in how you work with them. I'm planning a bit of a comparison video on exactly this soon so hopefully that'll help. But using speedlights are great for macro and as you can pick up a perfectly decent Godox or Yongnuo one on Amazon for pretty cheap it's not a big investment. Good luck!
I've had a Sigma 105mm for about 5 years, I promise you won't regret the purchase
One question, what do you suggest for auto and manual focus for Macro? Does an electronic lens with AF wins the trade off for the cost of a non electronic manual lens (like laowa 60 mm 2x macro ) ?
I use a manual focus lens for macro and other types of photography ( found it more reliable ). talking about sigma 105mm f2.8, I sold mine and held on to the Tokina cuz it was way heavier and harder to focus manually with it.. Manual focusing is fun except when taking moving subjects closer than the infinity mark of your lens
Speedlights are more versatile ( you can get a similar soft light with great diffusers ) and yet hand hold
@@robsingfield9977 Some say the Sigma 105mm is noisy. Has that been your experience?
Andrew, what little softbox do you have on your AD200 ??
Hi Paul, I think in this video it's just a generic collapsible speedlight softbox. They're pretty cheap on Amazon and various brands do them I think.
👏👏👏
Thanks, Romina, I hope you're well!
Hi please can you tell me what tripod that is? It looks very good for ground shots. It’s so wide and low
Hi Rory, it's the Gitzo Legende tripod, which I've been using without the centre column in order to let it splay its legs even lower. It's not cheap, but there are other tripods by more affordable brands that can do similar.
Those shots are absolutely gorgeous! Makes me wanna buy a macrolens.
Thank you! Definitely a smart purchase, in my opinion!
Good video
Thank you!
You mind me asking what kind of ball head you use?
Hi Kevin, I'm using a Gitzo tripod and Ball head here. Thanks for watching!
Enjoy your obvious enthusiasm.
Were all your shots taken at 1:1 ratio with your macro lens?
I cannot use my 100mm macro lens without a tripod ! The flash lighting makes the good shot so much better
Flash can make all the difference to these kinds of shots. I definitely recommend giving it a go if you haven't already!
I was shooting without a tripod and LED light when it was dark outside...well my ISO went CRAZY. Will do better next time
When focus stacking, are you (1) keeping camera fixed position and adjusting the lens, or (2) using “focus rail” method by keeping lens fixed and moving camera slightly for each image?
Hey Paul! With these shots I'm adjusting the focus ring on the len rather than moving the camera. For some of these I had the camera sitting on my jacket for stability on the ground and moving it would have been a little tricky.
What camera and lens did you use in this video? I'm new to taking macro photography and I did hear in the video it was a Canon but that's all I caught-I have ddfadh or something. I bought a Nikon P950 and was so disappointed I almost threw it out the window but requested a refund and it was approved. I have one reason t for this kind of photography, to shoot my amazing jumping spider 🕷️ Gypsy Pepperoni 🍕
Interesting video Andrew.
Can you tell me what light reflector/head on the flash was please?
Hey Andrew, cheers for watching! So the light itself is a godox ad200 with the standard speed light head. The softbox I crudely pulled over it is a generic collapsible mini softbox, the type you can find on amazon for about 20/30 pounds/dollars. You can use that type of softbox on any light.
After the bear attacks you in the Bearrea, will it beary 'ya in the Bearrea?
Know, know. I NO I'm punny.
A bear area... A "bearea" 🤣🤣🤣
Some macro photographers provide the Latin names of the different species they photograph. I know it’s a lot more work if you’re not an expert, so naturally I don’t insist, the decision is yours. But it would be nice.
inspiring film, but you have to improve your biological knowledge ;-). What you call clover is Wood sorrel. I can understand that it can be hard to put a species label of mushrooms and toadstools, though.
What type of light box are you using?
*googles wood sorrel* you're absolutely right! Thanks for the spot! I'm definitely no expert on identifying these things (clearly!) but I'm already enjoying picking up new knowledge on them while I enjoy the photography. It's a collapsible softbox for speed lights (just a generic one from Amazon) over a godox ad200. Thanks for watching!
My dog completely agrees with you that walkies with a photographer is infuriating.......
Hmmm, lots of mushrooms. You must be a really fungi.
If you walked slower I think you’d find even more opportunities 😌
I don't think it's physically possible, I'm too tall!