Macro, Close-up, and Micro Photography: What’s the Diff?
One of the coolest aspects of photography is its ability to take something ridonkulously small like a bee and get so up close and personal with it that you can literally count its leg hairs. But did you know that there’s more than one type of this really close photography? This article will shed some light on the differences between macro, close-up, and micro photography for all those of you who are interested in capturing all those teeny dancing angels that live on pinheads (or just like looking at them).
Magnification ratio and macro photography
To understand the difference between macro, micro, and close-up photography, the most important thing to understand is magnification ratio. Magnification ratio is just a fancy way of gauging how big your subject is in relation to how big it appears in your camera’s sensor. (The camera sensor determines how big a photo renders and can affect everything from how large you can scale your photo to how big it appears in your viewfinder.)True macro photography is anything that has a magnification ratio of at least 1:1 – meaning that if the coin you’re shooting in real life is two centimeters in diameter, it will look exactly that big to your camera’s sensor. Macro photography can also make the image appear several times bigger than it actually is in real life.
