One way is to us close up lens filters, which act like reading glasses for your camera. These allow you to get much closer to your subject, a fly in this case.  These can be found on ebay and other sellers for less than $20, while dedicated macro lenses can cost $500 or more.  The close up lens filters usually come in a kit with 3 filters of varying strength, +1, +2, and +4.

Close Up Filter Kit

The filters screw onto the front of the lens, like a UV or polarizing filter.

Filter on Camera

The kits usually come with 3 filters, +1, +2, and +4 strength. These can be stacked on the lens for a total power of +7.

Stacked Close Up Filters

Here are shots of a size 14 Renegade fly taken with each filter combination, starting with no filter and finishing up with +7 (all 3 filters stacked). With each shot, the fly was moved closer to the camera to the minimum focus distance, getting much closer with each additional filter.

Close Up Filter Series: no filter, to +7

My camera has 15 megapixels. This is 4750 pixels across. This allows about 1200 pixels across for this fly, taken with the +7 filter configuration, which is plenty to post online.

Close up filters provide a very inexpensive way to get into close up photography. Comparing $20 to $500 and you can almost not go wrong by picking up a set and trying to see if these meet your needs before investing in a dedicated macro lens.

The next blog entry on this topic will cover extension tubes, the middle ground in lens options.

A few months ago, I started getting into photography more, and received some good advice to upgrade my “glass”. (”glass” is fancy-pants photography talk for lens)  After shopping around and doing research, I picked up Canon’s 50mm f1.4 lens. This is known as a prime lens, since its a single focal length (not a zoom). Because its a fixed focal length, the designers have fewer variables and can better optimize the image quality for a given price point.

Here is the 50mm f1.4 and a typical kit lens, the 28-80mm, f4.5-5.6. Besides the  metal construction, notice how much more glass is present in the 50mm lens. I’ve been very happy with the quality of the shots using this lens. This also started my journey for acquiring more glass.

The 50mm doesn’t get close enough to fill the frame with a fly, but the image captured is very clear. A couple of options are available to get the 50mm closer, one in front of the lens (close up filters) and one between the camera and lens (extension tube); stay tuned for more info in upcoming posts.  Here is a size 14 fly taken at the closest focus distance for the 50mm:

The next upgrade was a dedicated macro lens, the Canon 100mm f2.8. This has 2 benefits, more magnification to get closer and its designed to allow closer focusing. At the closest focusing distance, the 100mm f2.8 gives a 1:1 ratio. This means that the fly image on the camera’s sensor is actual size.

Here is the same fly taken with the 100mm f2.8 macro lens, which fills the entire frame. (this was taken with a Canon 50d, which is a 1.6 “crop factor” camera, which helps fill the frame)

Since this is a blog, and the hallmark of blogs is un-original writing, executed poorly, I’ll start this series by linking to other sites, that have original writing and are executed excellently.   There is no sense in my trying to duplicate the excellent writing and content of these smart gentlemen.

Martin Joergensen of Global Fly Fisher has a tutorial on fly photography.  The tutorial covers photography and scanning flies using a flatbed scaner.

Global Fly Fisher Lighting Setup

Paul Dieter shows how to construct a fly studio out of scrap materials you may find around the house. His fly studio is includes a plastic light diffuser and reflectors to give even lighting 360 degrees around the fly.

Fly Studio

Neal Osborne of Fly Art Studio has tons of information on his site.  He has written several tutorials ranging from a beginners guide to fly photography with a point and shoot camera to very technical tutorials on light.

Neal Osborn's Point and Shoot Tutorial

Next, I’ll describe my evolution in fly photography and describe equipment and techniques that have helped me capture flies on filmbits.