SHOOT BRILLIANT MACRO ON A BUDGET

Dan Mold shows you how to get incredible close-ups with basic camera kit, a few everyday items, and a good dose of creativity

- Dan Mold

There's a whole new world just waiting to be discovered with your camera - all it requires is a macro lens, or even budget-friendly macro accessories. This will help you get closer to everyday items, and transform them into extraordinary photographs packed with detail. The great thing about macro is that it covers a broad range of subjects, from amazing close-ups of insects and flowers that you can easily find in your garden, local park or nature reserve, to still lifes of inanimate objects such as coins, watches, or food.

In this feature, we'll show you how to achieve fantastic macro shots with minimal kit and even the most limited of budgets, and also with more advanced gear that you'll want to master if you want to venture further down the macro rabbit hole. We'll also take you through three easy but highly effective techniques that you can try out around your home or in the garden.

Depth of field, also referred to as the zone of sharp focus in your images becomes extremely limited when you're focusing so close to your subject - even with higher aperture values such as f/22. To overcome this, we'll show you how to create a focus-stacked image by taking multiple shots at different focus distances and then combining the sharpest bits of each frame in Photoshop to create an image with a broader range of sharpness. Let's get started!

1 GET THE RIGHT MACRO GEAR

Kit yourself out with the right equipment to take amazing macro imagery