Camera College

Photographer and writer Marcus is a former editor of Digital Camera

Take your first steps in garden macro

Go the extra mile when you’re shooting close to home, and explore the world of creative close-up photography

While many of us may have been forced to keep our photography a bit more local this year, that’s not such a bad thing. Even a small garden or back yard can throw a feast of close-up photo opportunities your way, and you’ll be perfectly placed to make the most of changing seasons. Although you need some specialist equipment to explore the world in close-up, you don’t need a lot of it. It’s possible to get excellent results using a good-quality and relatively cheap close-up diopter, for example. This is an attachment that looks like an optical filter, and screws onto the front of a lens in the same way. It is essentially a magnifying glass, which reduces the minimum focusing distance of the lens. The drawback is that the image quality of a diopter doesn’t always match that of a dedicated close-up lens, and you lose the flexibility of being able to focus on objects that are farther away while the diopter is attached to your lens.

Extension tubes are another relatively affordable option. These simple metal tubes don’t contain any glass and fit between the camera and the lens. Like close-up dipoters, they allow the lens to be focused closer than normal, and they take away the opportunity to focus on more distant subjects. Unlike close-up diopters, they reduce the amount of light available