Sometimes when taking a picture, you want to get close to the subject. It may be a very small object, or you may want to photograph the fine details. As you quickly discover, close up photography is harder than it looks.

Problems With Close Up Photography

The mistake many people make in close up photography is attempting to use a zoom lens for very close-up photography. Zoom lenses are for taking images of a far away object, not a close up object. Most zoom lenses will not focus very close.

Bringing the camera close to the object creates its own problems. You or the camera might block the light. It can be difficult to bring the object into focus. However the biggest problem is something called depth of field. You find you can focus on part of the object, but the rest if it is blurry. Depth of field is the range of the image, from the foreground to the background, which can be sharply focused. This range is inversely proportional to the distance, so for very close objects the depth of field is very shallow indeed.

Macro Photography

Specialized lenses, called macro lenses, are meant specifically for close up photography. They are designed to focus at much closer distances than conventional lenses, and provide for optimum sharpness in the close-up range.

Photographers used to have to buy special macro lenses for their cameras, but today most digital cameras include a macro setting. This setting allows the typical consumer to take breathtaking pictures from short distances. This may be satisfactory for many subjects and even for many business uses, but it has its limitations. If the depth of field is very wide, even a camera's macro mode may not be able to get the full object in focus. It may require multiples shots, each using a different focal point, to fully document an object in pictures.

Hire A Professional

In many industries, close up photography provides valuable documentation of objects that are small, finely detailed or both. Scientific, industrial or medical photography often can't accept the limitations and distortion of standard macro modes in cameras. For these images, the best choice is to hire someone experienced in extreme close up photography.

While it may be less expensive to do it yourself, there is simply no way an inexperienced photographer can get the kind of detail a commercial photographer can. If your project depends on accuracy and precision, bringing in an outside party is the way to go. When you see the quality, sharp focus and wide depth of field high quality equipment brings, you will understand why so many businesses choose to hire professionals.