Get ready for your close-up!

Learn the basics of macro photography with your EOS camera

Spending so much time in lockdown has undoubtedly given us all an appreciation for the small things. Quite literally, in many cases. Having to be restricted to home turf for so long may have forced you to train your camera on subjects that are close at hand – and looking for camera gear that can help you get even closer. Many lenses enable you to get close enough to a subject so you magnify small details, but only a ‘true’ macro lens gives a max magnification of at least 1x. But what does this mean, and in light of the fact that you can make a large print of a small subject captured with any lens, why does it matter?

A magnification of 1x means that the subject is recorded on the camera’s sensor at the same size as it is in real life. This is often expressed as a reproduction ratio on the distance scale of the lens. At the minimum focus you get a reproduction ratio of 1:1 or ‘life size’ – so an object that is one centimetre long, for example, would take up one centimetre on the sensor. This means that a subject as small as an SD card would essentially fill the entire image on a full-frame sensor.

Once you enlarge this image on your PC screen, or print it out, the subject will be many more times its actual size, and details that are almost invisible to the naked eye will be clear to see.