Natural History Wanderings

Close-up  Flower Photography With A Compact Camera: The Good and the Bad

Yesterday I “focused on doing close-up flower photography with a compact camera. I used both Aperture Priority and the Macro Programmed Setting on the camera. Of course everything I mention here applies to non-flower close-up photography as well.

The Bad is:

• often can only shoot macro/close-ups at wide-angle too much background may show up in photo
• compact cameras rarely have manual focus controls that are very important in close-up photography
• sometimes tends to overexpose photo (check for blinkies)
• the smaller pixels may limit the quality of what you can do in the digital dark room

• it encourages you to take advantage of the creative distortion that wide-angle photography creates (the greater the wide-angle and the less parallel the camera is to the subject the greater the distortion)
• can often get very close to the flower; some camera allow you to literally have the lens touching a flower
• they are small and you can always have them with you
• the macro program setting simplifies things especially for a beginner

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