Get Ultra Closeups With Macro ModeOn Your iPhone
Photo by Hunter Moranville on Unsplash
Back in my SLR camera days, the hot lens to have was a high-quality macro lens. Now, as a sailing photographer I lived in the world of telephotos, shooting everything at a distance. My subjects were yards away from me, not inches. So one could argue that a macro lens for doing ultra close-ups was of marginal value. And considering the cost, bordered on frivolous.
But among my crowd of aspiring freelance photographers, a macro lens meant you were serious about your craft. With a wide-angle, a telephoto, AND a macro lens, you could shoot about anything.
Hey, National Geographic, here I am!
Well, it turned out that macro photography is a world unto itself and needs special lighting, critical focusing and generally a tripod to stabilize the camera. Like making ships in a bottle, unless it’s your jam it’s a challenging thing to dabble in and do a decent job.
Fast forward to 2023.
Just when you thought that Apple was running thin on new iPhone camera tricks, they roll out - TA DAH - Macro Mode.
And they made it accessible to the masses. Well, the masses that have an iPhone 13 Pro, 13 Pro Max, 14 Pro, or 14 Pro Max.
WITHOUT MACRO MODE
WITH MACRO MODE
Macro Mode uses more of the computational magic that shares and merges im-age information from all 3 lenses to create one excellent photo. Even better, Macro Mode works with video captures too, including Slo-mo and Time-lapse.
It’s pretty cool.
The magic is in how the iPhone can use the Ultra-Wide lens to focus and digitally compose the shot.
Macro Mode switches on automatically when you position the camera close to an object. You’ll see a yellow icon of a flower appear next to the .5x lens option. That alerts you Macro Mode is active. If you don’t see the macro icon, just go to Settings > Camera and be sure that Macro Control is switched on.
And while you’re there, I recommend turning on Lens Correction too. Generally, close-up photos with wide-angle suffer from image distortion around the edges of the picture - the closest objects (or people) are unnaturally large - but Lens Correction can help minimize that.
Macro Mode defaults to the 1x Wide-Angle lens, which captures the most detail, but you can also choose the 2x, 2.5x (on iPhone 13 Pro Max), or 3x (on iPhone 14 Pro & Pro Max) to enlarge the image even more, although the images won’t have quite the sharpness as those captured with the 1x lens.
What’s wonderful about macro images is that you can see your world in a brand new way. If you are a crafter, you can see the details in your work, larger than life. Everything around you has detail and texture that is easy to overlook from a distance. Water droplets, tree bark, flower buds, and sand all present themselves in new ways. Just turn your kids loose on a boring, rainy afternoon with Macro Mode and a Lego set and see what they create.
It’s why we all wanted a macro lens, back in the day. It’s the chance to see what’s around us in an interesting new way.
But now it’s much easier.
