What is Macro and Close-up Photography
Macro and close-up photography can take the viewer to new and seldom seen vantage points. However, macro photography also often demands more careful attention to photographic technique.
Close-up Photography
Magnification describes the size an object will appear on your camera’s sensor, compared to its size in real-life. The closer you place your lens relative to the subject, the larger that subject will appear in the image.
If you are using a compact or bridge digital camera, then setting this to macro mode will enable closer focusing distances and greater magnifications. If you are using a digital SLR camera, then your options are more numerous. You will need to either use a dedicated macro lens or improve the magnification capabilities of one of your existing camera lenses by adding an extension tube or a close-up lens (amongst other options).
Macro Photography
Macro photography is close-up photography, but All close-up photography is not a macro. When we think close-up, we refer to a zoomed-in subject which fills the frame, such as a portion of a face, a stream of water or the entire flower. In practice this usually means that we were able to focus on a subject close enough so that when a regular 6×4 inch (15×10 cm) print is made, the image is life-size or larger. This requires a magnification ratio of only approximately 1:4, so close-up photos are easily achieved by many non-macro lenses and a “Macro” setting on point and shoot cameras.However, a macro demands a higher lens quality, or another technique which will achieve a true magnification ratio of 1:1. A close-up qualifies as a true macro only if the image projected on the “film plane” (i.e., film or a full frame digital sensor measuring 24 x 35 mm) is close to the same size as the subject, which in itself is a definition of a photographic 1 : 1 (or lifesize) ratio. Of course, magnifications larger than 1 :1 ( like 2 :1, 4 :1 etc ) are also considered to be macros, and often you will see these in extreme close-ups of insects where the entire frame is filled out by an insect’s face or an eye. However, at the minimum magnification in order to be a true 1:1 macro, the photograph from edge to edge must represent the area which is in reality, no bigger than 35 mm across. So Macro is Bigger than 1:1 Magnification & less than 1:1 is close-up Photograph. `