Using Wide-Angle Lenses for Close-up Work
HE OTHER REASON you won’t find the word macro in this book’s title is because I include an extensive section on shooting close-ups with a wide-angle lens. I can hear the question now: Did Bryan just say “shooting close-ups with a wide-angle lens”? Yes, I did! Shooting close-ups with a wide-angle is a worthy investigation into the reasons why most shooters don’t—and why most shooters should begin to embrace their wide-angle as a close-up lens with fervor. The world of wide-angle close-ups provides, in many respects, even more fertile ground, more as-yet-unexplored territory than the world we normally associate with “normal” close-up photography.
Have you ever found yourself looking down the barrel of a gun? If not, then it’s safe to say, you are now! Not a welcome sight, I’m sure. Note the differences in these close-up compositions. Clearly, both show that the visual weight (indicated by the limited area of focus) is on the end of the barrel. Yet, it’s also clear that both of these backgrounds tell a different story, and the lenses have something to do with that. The second image has more of a ghetto, ganglike feel, revealing not only more of the graffiti background but my model’s suit, which looks like something out of Reservoir Dogs. The other has what could be considered a more neutral background. For the image at right, I used a 35–70mm zoom lens at the 35mm focal length; for the more neutral shot, I used a 105mm lens. The exposure was the same for both.
In this case, one photograph is not better than the other, but clearly, the photograph taken with the wider-angled 35mm simply conveys more information. When you take the time to know the “visions” of every piece of close-up gear you own, the amount of close-up opportunities available to you does become truly unlimited.
Top: Micro-Nikkor 35–70mm lens at 35mm, f/5.6 for 1/160 sec.; bottom: Micro-Nikkor 105mm lens, f/5.6 for 1/160 sec.
When you opt to use a wide-angle lens for close-up work, do so wisely. Wide-angles are not the best choices for all close-up compositions. As you’ll discover, there are many equipment options for achieving a close-up photograph: wide-angle, telephoto, and close-up lenses; extension tubes; reversing rings; and of course, actual macro lenses. When it comes to developing your “macro vision,” it is, first and foremost, vitally important that you know—really know—the “vision” of the many combinations of lenses and accessories that are available. Understanding the vision of your equipment will not only enable you to make the often quick decisions necessary when a close-up opportunity presents itself (a butterfly just landed on that flower 3 feet away from you!) but will help you to understand which combination of close-up equipment will offer the right angle of view. More often than not, it is the angle of view that has a tremendous impact on the background, and if there’s one area that’s in constant need of your attention in close-up photography, it’s the background.
Consider this example. It’s a simple setup for sure: a single flower anchored in a piece of putty, with a very colorful shirt draped over an object (a lens, in this case) in the background. Notice that in both compositions the flower is the same size; it clearly fills the frame in both cases, yet it’s obviously clear that the backgrounds are radically different. What happened? I made the right image with a 35–70mm macro zoom set at 35mm. I made the image above with a 105mm lens. Since the angle of view is greater with the 35mm wide-angle lens (62 degrees) than with the 105mm (27 degrees), I recorded a wider background in that image. And in this case, that wider background does nothing to visually help the flower. It’s simply a distraction, an eyesore, an interruption to what is an otherwise simple and clean shot of a lone flower.
So this was not the place to pull out a moderately wide-angle lens and shoot a close-up, but it was the right place to choose the moderate telephoto lens, which rendered the colorful background as an out-of-focus complement to the flower due to its narrower angle of view.
Left: Nikkor 35–70mm macro zoom lens at 35mm, f/8 for 1/30 sec.; Right: Micro-Nikkor 105mm lens, f/8 for 1/30 sec.