Photography 101: How to take macro shots with just the kit-lens?
2 min readMay 22, 2020
8+ tips to start taking close-ups without a macro or prime lens.
- When shooting for good close-ups for nature photography, it is always good that you have a macro lens or prime lens. Start knowing the basics of manual photography, if not available, because we try to depict a prime lens do take a good picture.
- Try setting the aperture as high as possible. The aperture of the kit lens is usually from 3.5 to 5.6.
- Good field depth is produced with a high aperture, and more light is collected through the sensor, which is required to take pictures with poor light.
- We also need to keep the focal length high as well. This does help in creating the natural depth of field.
- For kit-lens, for example, for an 18–55 mm lens, we should generally try to keep the lens’s focal length to 55 mm to get a good depth of field.
- Getting the 55 mm focal length is manageable, but at the same time, we have to compromise with the aperture as here, the default aperture turns to 5.6 as default due to the distance being zoomed.
- We need the above settings even though we have to compromise with the better lighting and the more natural depth of field produced by the high aperture.
- The ISO settings can be manipulated according to the need. A full-frame camera has a higher range of ISO to play around without capturing much grain in the picture.
- The shutter speed should be managed according to the picture we are taking. If the subject is still, we can have shutter speed anywhere above 200 seconds, taking a look at the light meter in the camera.
- Lastly, if there is ample light, we try to keep the ISO as low as possible and then play the manual setting just around the shutter speed according to the picture that we want to capture.
