Macro Videography

noirist said:
Sorry guys, there's no free lunch with small sensor cameras for macro videography. If you use a small sensor camera, you get a wider depth of field at a given focal length and fstop, but you loose high ISO performance. And you can take the exact same picture with a large sensor camera simply by increasing the fstop. Either way, you'll need lots of light to compensate for the tight aperture required to obtain a workable depth of field.
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I'm assuming regular cinematography lighting techniques can be applied to this. I've also seen macro studio setups with miniature versions of lighting. Do you have any insight on lighting for macro?
 
DL Razinkas said:
Iyrov, your images are stunning. It's great to know you can achieve beautiful macro shots with inexpensive extension tubes. Seethlaw,
I think you have to decide how far you want to delve into macro shooting. If you want to do it professionally I would bite the bullet and invest in a good macro lens. I love my Canon 100 Macro IS. It's worth every penny. I use it all the the time on either the 5D3 or the C300. My view has always been that lenses are king, even more so than the camera. And you can write them off or make it back through rental fees.

Having IS on a macro blows my mind. Before IS macro meant tripods and static shots. Now you can do kick ass shots on the fly, fast.
I think the IS is worth the extra $$.

Having the RIGHT amount of depth of field in your shot is in my view what makes a great macro. My approach is very organic. I set up the frame and look and it at a wide open f stop and decide what I want in focus. Sometimes really shallow works. Other times I need to see the entire eyeball in focus and not just 1/3 of it. I play with the f stop until I find the right amount of focus that works for the shot and story. Often that means a crazy deep stop like f11 or f22. How do I get the exposure? Because I shoot mainly docs these days when I discover a cool macro shot I never have the time to pump in light so I often boost the ISO. I've done macro shots outside at 3200 ISO so I could get a f16 or 22 and the image holds up. Incredible! If I have the time I will light the shot for the best control and a lower ISO.

Here is a clip from the opening of a film I shot a long time ago. The first shot is a really cool macro of an eyeball. The rest of the short clip is not macro but fun to watch. warning: some of the images are hard to take. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnuRpHkg0H8
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Going to sound like a complete noob here, but what is IS?

I agree on your approach on lens, I need to do more research and be patient in finding a good, sturdy and hopefully not to expensive macro lens.

Congrats on the feature, that eyeball shot was pretty sick, too bad we couldn't see more of it lol.
 
IS is lens image stabilization and you can find it on many Canon cameras. There's lots of info on it on the web, but in a nutshell it allows you to shoot handheld with longer lens like the Canon 100mm and not have camera shake. Quite amazing.

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DL Razinkas said:
IS is lens image stabilization and you can find it on many Canon cameras. There's lots of info on it on the web, but in a nutshell it allows you to shoot handheld with longer lens like the Canon 100mm and not have camera shake. Quite amazing.

D
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Cool, thank you sir.
 
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