Canon Digital SLR Photography Tips

Tutorials

Canon EOS Digital SLR Product Range Click on the camera of interest to find out more

Canon EOS 40D

Have you explored your digital camera's ability to shoot close-ups yet? There's a special 'macro' shooting mode that makes taking close-ups easy and fun. And, once you've mastered the basic shooting techniques, you can go on to determine the best camera settings to use for all the close-up shots you take.

What you need to get started:
1. A digital camera
2. A tripod (handy but not essential)

How to shoot:

  • Select the close-up (macro) setting from your camera's mode dial or shooting menu (a flower icon is normally used to indicate this shooting mode). Check your camera's instruction manual to see how close to the subject you can shoot with this setting. Some cameras won't take a shot if the subject isn't in focus, although many cameras will continue to take pictures, even if you're too close to the subject. This means you may need to take several pictures before getting one that's sharp.
  • Mounting your camera on a tripod can make it easier to take a sharp picture, although it may also limit your scope for trying out different shooting angles. Most compact digicams have their closest focusing points at the wide lens setting. However, if you would like some more 'working room' between the end of your camera's lens and the subject - for example, when taking pictures of insects - you can easily set the lens to 'tele' and shoot from further away. With a digital SLR, best results are usually obtained with a moderate telephoto setting, although, if you have a special macro lens it will do an even better job than a zoom lens.
Watch out for:
  1. Camera and subject movement. With close-ups, the more you magnify the image, the more you emphasise camera and subject movement. Keep your shutter speed above 1/250 second and, set a higher ISO value (up to 400 with digicams or higher with digital SLR cameras) if light levels are relatively low. When you require slower shutter speeds, mount the camera on a tripod and trigger it with the self-timer. Avoid shooting in windy conditions.
  2. Depth-of-field problems. The lens aperture you use can dramatically affect the depth-of-field in your photo; in other words, how much of the subject looks sharp. With a wide aperture of, say f/2.8 or f/3.5, the depth-of-field in the shot will be very narrow and the foreground and background will appear blurred. You will therefore need to focus on the exact area in the subject that you want to have sharp. Stopping the lens down to f/5.6, f/8 or (if you have a digital SLR) smaller apertures allows you to increase the depth-of-field in the shot and make more of the subject look sharp. However, because less light enters the camera you will need to reduce the shutter speed and/or increase the ISO setting.
  3. Exposure problems with flash. The light from the flash can overwhelm the delicate tones in close subjects. For very close subjects, the lens can get in the way of the flash light causing the top half of the subject to be illuminated while the rest receives little or no light. If you can move the flash away from the camera this problem can be solved, especially if the flash output can be adjusted downwards. However, it's simpler to avoid on-camera flash wherever possible.
  4. Parallax error when shooting with a compact digicam or any camera that doesn't have a through-the-lens viewfinder. Because the viewfinder sees a different view of the subject from the sensor, when shooting with a non-SLR camera you must use the LCD monitor for composing all shots. Digital SLR users will find their cameras' viewfinders show them the subject as it will be recorded.

Digital SLR camera viewfinders show the subject as it will be recorded
Parallax error on compact camera viewfinders show a different scene than what is actually captured
EOS 400D