{"id":100363,"date":"2021-07-17T05:57:32","date_gmt":"2021-07-17T11:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=100363"},"modified":"2021-07-17T10:38:54","modified_gmt":"2021-07-17T16:38:54","slug":"shooting-macro-with-a-telephoto-lens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/17\/shooting-macro-with-a-telephoto-lens\/","title":{"rendered":"Shooting Macro With A Telephoto Lens"},"content":{"rendered":"

Detail. Give me detail.<\/p>\n

Macro photography: photography producing photographs of small items larger than life size.<\/em><\/p>\n

By preference I’m primarily a bird photographer with a ‘minor’ in wildlife photography. But given the means and the opportunity I’ll photograph insects, spiders, flowers, worms, minerals and just about anything else natural. Often that means photographing something small to very small but I’ll be damned if I’ll mount a macro lens to my camera and sacrifice opportunities with birds and wildlife in order to get macro photographs.<\/p>\n

And I don’t have to. I can and do use my telephoto lens to shoot macro.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/9, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender<\/em><\/p>\n

On recent birding trips to the mountains I’ve been watching a clump of Showy Milkweed for the variety of insects it attracts, including bees, ants and butterflies. Two days ago this Two-tailed Swallowtail caught my attention. A beautiful butterfly on an attractive and interesting flower in good light and I had my telephoto lens at hand – how could I resist? Instead of messing around with specialized equipment I just stuck my telephoto lens out my pickup window and fired away.<\/p>\n

Technically this is already a macro photograph because the subjects (butterfly, flowers and even the two ants) are larger than life size.<\/p>\n

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But I had enough pixels for a larger crop and still be able to achieve reasonably good image quality so you know me, I had to do it.<\/p>\n

I love seeing detail like this in natural subjects and using my telephoto lens instead of a macro lens allowed me enough depth of field to get almost everything sharp. And if a bird or other critter happened to come along, sometimes in these situations they do, all I’d have to do to take its photo is point my lens in a different direction. Unlike macro lenses, telephoto lenses are incredibly versatile that way. And as a bonus you save the money required to purchase another lens.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong. Macro lenses can do things that telephoto lenses cannot. But using telephoto lenses to take macro photographs has its own advantages including:<\/p>\n