Macro at Home: Easy Lighting and Focus Tips and Tricks!

In this week's easy macro tutorial, I show how I take a photo of a beautiful flower at home, using flash lighting and focus stacking. I explain how I use single and multiple flashes, firing them off camera to help shape the image and how I balance the settings to create the look I want.
I discuss my camera settings and how to use ambient light and create a background light. Finally, I show how I use a spray bottle to add water droplets and how I focus stack the image using Adobe Lightroom and Helicon Focus to create a vibrant, pin-sharp image.
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#macro #photography #tutorial

[@AbleExplorer]

Awesome video ! Thank you SO much !!!

[@tombell8156]

Another great video…..thank you.

[@ChrisHunt4497]

Thank you Andrew. I have just bought some sunflowers and want to photograph them. Your video is very helpful. 😊

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Thanks Chris, I hope you have a good time photographing them!

[@RichardLiloc]

It's always delightful watching your videos.

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Thanks Richard, much appreciated!

[@kenhenley7599]

Interesting project. Need to buy the wife a bunch of flowers...and nick some! Cheers.

[@MrCaliber30]

Great video. Very helpful.

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Thanks for watching!

[@simon.b3547]

Excellent once again Andrew

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Thank you!

[@WilburnEdwards]

Fun video. When I create focal stacking or panorama's I take a photo of my open hand at the start and with a closed fist at the end of the sequence.

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

A good technique!

[@susanfirth2279]

I really enjoy your videos. Loved how it turned out.

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Thanks Susan, much appreciated!

[@wongkenneth4005]

Good job, beautiful photo.Thanks for sharing.

[@stuartmale1739]

G'day Andrew great video. Love the macro and flowers. Personally I don't know about lifting the reds. The lower petals at the front I felt looked weird. Looked great with the water though.

[@gary.kenyon]

Great shot

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Thanks Gary!

[@paulhowardvideos]

This is great instruction. Thanks for this video. QQ, when you edit the photos, should you always edit them before you stack (i.e. shadows and highlights)? It looks like you did both but could you just do it all after the merge of all the photos?

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Thanks Paul! I do both ways to be honest -- editing before the stack and copying settings across all base images, or simply editing one image after the stack. Some people swear by one method, some by the other. I've never found much difference to be quite honest.

[@StevenFinlayGB]

Enjoyable video. I liked it. Another way of moving the focus is to use EOS Utility (Canon). In live view mode you can use buttons to move the focus through the image. No quite as captivating to watch as manually focusing I guess but is means you don't have to move the camera.

[@TimvanderLeeuw]

Personally I very much like backlight effects but it does need a bit of front lighting too, either a weak second light or from a reflector.
Nice experiments!

[@anamariazaharie]

what camera do you use?

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Here I'm using a canon r5

[@_32Signs]

Why not use a 2 sec or 5 sec timer to avoid any movement?
Nice tutorial. Thank you.

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Because the camera moving wasn't the problem, it was whenever I moved it made the plant move so a timer wouldn't have changed anything