Extreme Marko

Themes for articles sometimes build from unlikely sources. While casting about for some sure-fire, weather proof projects for a teaching course, we had occasion to rebuild and recommission a dark field illuminator. More on the technique later, but for starters it guaranteed an ability to make macro nature shots regardless of the weather outside (which turned out particularly useful as it was pouring down and not an insect in sight!). The dark field technique was described back in May 2007 so it is timely to repeat it. For the first time ever we also include a DIY project in Professional Imagemaker in keeping with a general maxim of macro photography that what you do with the BacoFoil and Blu-Tack is often as important as the latest fancy camera or lens!

There are a number of issues to overcome in pursuit of higher magnification macro work, by which we mean from 1x magnification to about 10x:



1. The depth of field is vanishingly small, measured in fractions of a millimetre.

2. There is an extreme sensitivity to vibration.

3. The working distances in front of the lens are very small, often less a than a centimetre.

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