The following graph shows, for a set of 7 macro lenses from Sigma, Canon, and Tamron, the Minimum Working Distance versus lens focal length. Also, the MWD does not include lens filters or the lens hood, so if you are using these your effective MWD will be smaller. For long focal length lenses, the long lens itself can eat up half of the MFD, and the MWD is a much better indicator of the space you have to work with. Minimum Working Distance is the distance between your lens’ front element and your subject when the lens is set at 1:1 magnification. MFD is the distance between the sensor and the subject. If you investigate these lenses, you may see both MFD (Minimum Focusing Distance) and MWD (Minimum Working Distance) specified, or usually just MFD. Short focal length lenses will include a wider swath of (out-of-focus) background than long focal length lenses with their narrower field of view. Various “zoom” or kit lenses (that over-advertise themselves as “macro”) offer only 0.2x – 0.3x at their closest focusing point, and are not too useful for filling the sensor with a small subject.įor the above lenses, there is a wide variation in minimum focusing distances that produce the same size subject images. There are other lenses reasonably referred to as “macro” that range from 0.5x to 5.0x.

True macro lenses offer a magnification factor of 1.0x or 1:1 at their closest focus settings, i.e. So, if you have a butterfly with physical dimensions 1.5″ x 1.8″ (encompassing antennae, wingtips, and feet), then a life-sized macro image would place the butterfly on the smaller sensor somewhat like this: A “full-frame” DSLR has a sensor of dimensions 24mm x 36mm (0.94″ x 1.4″). So, first off, what is a macro lens? The official definition of a macro lens is that it should be able to reproduce a life-sized image of an object on the image sensor. In this feature I’ll talk about a few approaches to taking macro photographs with the intent of making you aware of some of the alternatives.

Macro photography might be new to some of you, or you might not have the gear you’d like to have for the images you want. Next month’s competition is “Macro (not Floral) Photography”.

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