I’m going to get access to a macro lens soon, and I’m really excited for it, but I’ve never used one before. Any advice for getting good photos, or how to avoid common mistakes?
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Here are a couple of Youtube channels that are highly recommended for macro photography - from beginner tips to experts.
You can also find sites covering your specific lens and camera set-up.
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I’ll add Allan Walls Photography as a good resource once you become interested in higher magnification macro photography.
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When you say macro lens, do you mean one for your phone or do you mean a macro objective for an actual camera?
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If you are getting one for a DSLR/Mirrorless camera, get a flash and diffuser. You are going to want lots of light.
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Two iNat users who have good macro YouTube channels are:
https://www.youtube.com/@Xx7trey
https://www.youtube.com/@naturefold
You can also search for macro discussions on the forum, there are quite a few.
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Both are highly underrated. I love that Trey uses relatively low-cost gear and takes fantastic photos in places that most people consider mundane. My only ask would be for more Xx7trey videos.
I’m less familiar with Alexis, having discovered naturefold only a few weeks ago, but I have the same desire for more.
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This is for those people that already have an iPhone 13 (or newer) Pro phone or are looking to get a new phone but also like macro:
When I first caught the iNat bug for bugs a little over a year ago, I was pleasantly surprised at the macro capability of my iPhone 13 Max Pro, but I found the iOS camera app was pretty lacking.
I purchased a few camera apps until discovering the Halide app. Originally what drew me to Halide was their addition of manual focus and RAW image capture, but I soon found that in macro mode, with flash on, the app will autofocus at a distance of 20mm from the subject. Which opened up a world of tiny insects (<5mm) that I had been missing without the bulk of a DSLR.
For illustration here is an observation of a leafhopper nymph from a few days ago: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/235268102
This solution does have its limitations, for instance it will autofocus on the farthest object when trying to photograph an insect on a leaf, but overall for black lighting it has worked very well for me.
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You’ve lost me. I don’t think either of these people are using iPhones for their macro photography. Did you mean to post this to another thread?
Perhaps I misread but I thought this tread was looking for tips on macro photography, I was just sharing the method I found for doing macro observations using my phone rather than a larger camera setup.
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I see. You probably clicked the wrong reply button. You replied to my post and not the thread. The reply to thread button is lower down.
For those who don’t know, this is what @kevintoo is referring to:
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I know I’ve that a few times, and I still do from time to time…
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Thanks for being more diplomatic and clear than I’ve been capable of lately. 
If you’ve never used a macro lens before, there may be some surprises. These things all follow from the basic physics, but may not be things you considered before.
You loose a lot of light
The general rule that the f-stop tells you how much light the lens lets thru is actually an approximation for when the image projected by the lens is much smaller than the scene being projected.
The real light that gets thru is what you expect from the f-stop times 1 / (1+m)2, where m is the magnification factor (image dimension / scene dimension). Consider taking a portrait of a person with a camera that has a “full frame” 36x24 mm sensor. You orient the camera vertically with the scene being about 1 foot (300 mm) wide. That is projected 24 mm wide onto the camera sensor by the lens. That’s a magnification of 1/12.5.
Plugging that into the light reduction formula, we get 86% of the light you would otherwise expect from the f-stop setting, or 0.22 f-stops less. That’s so little as to be irrelevant in most circumstances.
However, with 1:1 scene size to image size, you end up with 1/(1+1)2 = 1/4. That’s 2 f-stops down, something you can no longer ignore. And, 1:1 is just the beginning of the macro range. If you’re actually magnifying from scene to image, then it gets dim fast.
This is why you tend to need a lot of light for macro photography. Usual solutions are to use a flash on an extension and hold the flash near the end of the lens. That puts a lot of light on the subject. If you get serious about macro photography you should consider getting a “ring flash”. It’s a flash shaped like a donut. The lens sticks thru the hole. The flash then illuminates the scene from a close distance and all-around. Sometimes you don’t want the all-around to not flatten the 3D appearance, but that’s for a different discussion.
Camera wobble gets a lot worse
Your hands are always moving a little bit, even when you are trying to be still. For taking a portrait of a person, this is not much of a problem. You can use 1/50 s or faster shutter speed, and there shouldn’t be motion blur in ordinary cases.
However, when the scene is small, the trembling motion of your hands become large in comparison. A flash again helps with this because it effectively causes a fast shutter speed. Sometimes using a flash isn’t practical, and you have to think about this carefully. When using natural light, you need to mount the camera or rest your hands against something still. You’ll find it’s probably more tricky than you think.
You lose depth of field
As the distance from scene to camera lens gets smaller, depth of field goes down. If you try to take a picture of a penny to fill the frame, for example, you’ll find it difficult to keep all parts of the penny in focus.
One way to increase depth of field is by using a smaller aperture (higher f-stop number). Macro shots usually start a f/22 and go up from there. Of course that gives you even less light to work with.
Another problem with small aperture is that you start hitting the diffraction limit due to the small effective lens diameter. This is why dedicated macro lenses don’t come with ridiculously high f-stops. For a 1:1 lens, f/64 is often the upper limit. Diffraction effects are already obvious at 60 mm and f/64, so you wouldn’t want to go higher.
There are advanced ways to get larger depth of field, like focus stacking, but that’s beyond the scope of a simple introduction and requires that you have some experience, know what you’re doing, and understand the underlying physics.
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I agree, a flash is also great in the field, many insects remain in the shade, or backlit. I’m using my old speedlite with its integrated/foldable diffuser, in manual mode, and a tele lens that goes only to 0.4 x I think (so not really “macro”), but it’s often helpful to have the flash, even on sunny days!
WRT this point, consider how you compose the shot - try and be absolutely perpendicular to the subject for a dorsal shot. This gets more of the subject in focus and reduces the need for focus stacking.
Likewise, if you take a cute picture picture of an insects face, expect that absolutely nothing else will be in focus.
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Depends on the camera. My Olympus TG-6 can do focus stacking in the field, which may not be the highest quality but it can definitely be useful, and does not require experience. You just have to hold the camera still and let it do its thing.
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Be prepared to get into yoga positions you never though you could hold for so long. Your core muscles will get all the exercise you need from a day doing macro in the field lol.
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And your knees will be…unhappy…
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