Macro photography adds a wonderful dimension that allows us to see beyond the norm, no matter what your interests may be, natural or man made. And you don’t have to spend a lot of time traveling, backyards offer a huge number of potential subjects. Don’t have a yard, head to a nearby park. Let’s see what we need to have some fun with this.
Now you need to have a SLR(single lens reflex camera), film or digital because there are a few lens options you might want to explore. Having said that, a “normal” (not macro, which just has built in extension to focus close) lens can work for many macro applications. Starting with the simplest and generally least expensive way to get a closer view is to use screw- on lenses usually called diopters. They come in increasing magnifications, listed as +1,+2, +3, etc. These can be stacked for additional magnification, start with the strongest next to the lens, add the next strongest and so on. Easy to use but with a very real caution, adding another layer of glass to even a good lens can degrade the resulting image. The best of the diopter add- ons are two-element lenses and are corrected to give better edge to edge sharpness and will give better results than the less expensive single element lenses. Nikon no longer makes their iteration of these but they are still available on line. Canon still manufactures a two-element supplementary lens.
Pronghorn Run 