Macro insect and plant photography is one of the most technically demanding disciplines in the camera bag — and, once you’ve started, one of the most compulsive. This gallery collects close-up work shot in England and France, exploring the strange and vivid world that exists at the scale of millimetres: shield bugs armoured in metallic green, crane flies rendered in forensic detail, flowers whose structure you’d never otherwise notice, and beetles that look as though they’ve been upholstered in jewels.
The fundamental challenge of macro is physics. To fill the frame with a subject the size of a fingernail, the lens has to be very close — often two or three inches away — which creates problems that compound each other rapidly. The depth of field at that distance is measured in fractions of a millimetre, so even a slight breeze, a twitching antenna, or the photographer’s own breathing can throw the subject out of focus. Flash is almost always necessary, both to freeze movement and to compensate for the narrow apertures needed to claw back some depth of field. And for static subjects like flowers and lichen, focus-bracketing — shooting dozens of frames at incrementally different focus distances and stacking them in software — produces sharpness that a single frame simply cannot achieve. The Common Hedge parsley image in this set is a 24-frame stack.
All the macro insect and plant photography here was taken with the OM System 60mm f/2.8 macro lens, which produces a true 1:1 reproduction ratio. The camera for most frames was the OM-1, with a handful on the OM-5; a few of the damselfly and spider shots, where the subject was unapproachable at close quarters, use the M.Zuiko 300mm f/4 IS PRO instead, giving working distance where the 60mm would have spooked the insect. The OM System cameras have a particular reputation among macro photographers — the in-body stabilisation, focus-bracketing automation, and the compact, light bodies make them a natural choice for this kind of work.
Camera settings and EXIF data
Show EXIF data for all 27 images
| Image | Camera | Focal Length | Aperture | Shutter | ISO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lawn shrimp | OM-1 | 60mm | f/8.0 | 1/80s | 200 |
| Ah, got me there. Not sure. | OM-1 | 60mm | f/6.3 | 1/5s | 200 |
| Nephrotoma (Crane Fly) | OM-1 | 60mm | f/6.3 | 1/5s | 200 |
| Crowfoot violet | OM-1 | 60mm | f/6.3 | 1/25s | 200 |
| Geranium Roberanium | OM-1 | 60mm | f/6.3 | 1/50s | 200 |
| Crowfoot violet | OM-1 | 60mm | f/6.3 | 1/25s | 200 |
| Coesona Tigrina (hunter fly) | OM-1 | 60mm | f/5.0 | 1/30s | 200 |
| Dwarf lake Iris | OM-1 | 60mm | f/5.0 | 1/100s | 200 |
| Chrysolina (leaf beetle) | OM-1 | 60mm | f/6.3 | 1/20s | 200 |
| Rhododendron flower | OM-1 | 60mm | f/6.3 | 1/100s | 200 |
| Blue damselfly | E-M1 Mk III | 300mm | f/8.0 | 1/320s | 64 |
| Red conjoined Damselflies | OM-1 | 240mm | f/5.6 | 1/50s | 200 |
| Crab spider on an Arum Lily | OM-1 | 300mm | f/5.6 | 1/1250s | 200 |
| Housefly | E-M1 Mk III | 300mm | f/5.6 | 1/2500s | 250 |
| European Rose Chafer (Cetonia Aurata) | OM-1 | 60mm | f/2.8 | 1/25s | 200 |
| Skullcap flower | OM-1 | 60mm | f/6.3 | 1/100s | 200 |
| Summer leaf | OM-1 | 60mm | f/8.0 | 1/100s | 200 |
| Summer leaf | OM-1 | 60mm | f/8.0 | 1/100s | 200 |
| Summer Chafer (slightly foxed) | OM-5 | 60mm | f/8.0 | 1/50s | 250 |
| Common Hedge parsley (24-image stack) | OM-5 | 60mm | f/8.0 | 1/50s | 250 |
| Cats-tail | OM-5 | 60mm | f/9.0 | 1/50s | 250 |
| Yellow Lichens | OM-5 | 60mm | f/9.0 | 1/50s | 200 |
| Yellow Lichens | OM-5 | 60mm | f/8.0 | 1/50s | 250 |
| Nezara Viridula (Shield Bug) | OM-5 | 60mm | f/13.0 | 1/15s | 250 |
| Stink bug | OM-5 | 60mm | f/13.0 | 1/50s | 250 |
| Brindled Beauty moth | OM-1 | 60mm | f/6.3 | 1/100s | 200 |
| Shield bug | OM-1 | 60mm | f/6.3 | 1/100s | 200 |