Right now I shoot with an old beat-up Canon Rebel XT. Yes, it even has some cracks in the body by the shutter-button. But it still works (it was my first digital camera) so I haven't the heart or the money to replace it. My favorite lenses are my Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6
and Nifty Fifty
. The 28-135mm lens I have had for years and years and used it originally on my Canon Elan (a film camera). I have had the nifty fifty for over two years and it is still working flawlessly. I honestly have a passion for photography and I am constantly playing with my camera. So imagine how excited I was to find this great tutorial on Photojojo. I have always wanted to do some macro photography but didn't want to invest in another lens. So imagine how thrilled I was that I could just simply take off my $100 nifty fifty, turn it around, and hand-hold it on my camera and shoot decent macro shots!
This was one of my first images I photographed. I was focusing on the metal thing and this ant happened to run by and I managed to capture it. It was 100% luck, but I love this image. I especially love the soft bokeh
and the little tiny highlighted hairs on the ant's metasoma (I had to look this up).
You can use any lens to shoot macro. I had my camara in manual mode and adjusted the ISO and exposure until the images looked properly exposed in my camera. I love the shallow-depth-of-field (I shot with a wide aperture). You can't auto-focus, you just move in until your subject is sharp. And for every focused image I would have five images that were fuzzy because of movement (mine or my subject due to wind).
I am a macro-addict now. I could not stop taking photos. I know I won't get the sharp results of a real micro lens, but I actually love the "arty" images I was able to capture. You can see a small sample of my work below.
From top right: army guy, cicada, pressure setting on a sprinkler, metal thing on post for barbed wire, flower, end of metal toy shovel, rainbow scarab, wooden blocks, mushroom, berries, bark, toy gun, metal screen, flower, army guy, ant
