What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of a Macro Lens in 2023?

advantages and disadvantages of a macro lens

What’s going on everyone today I am going to show you, how a macro lens can change the game for your photography and videography. So, first of all, what is a macro lens, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of a macro lens?

What are Macro Lenses?

Macro lenses allow you to take incredibly close-up photos. They are built to allow extremely close focusing. These lenses are perfect for nature, food, and any small object having tons of details but are difficult to see with your eye.

Advantages and Disadvantages of a Macro Lenses

Advantages of Macro LensesDisadvantages of Macro Lenses

Remarkable Close-up shots

Expensive than Extension Tubes

Better Bokeh and Portrait Effects

Handling the Macro Lens

Trying new trends in Photography

Difficult for other types of photography for a beginner.

Advantages of Macro Lenses

Implausible Macro Shots

In general, your subject in the final photo of the video is going to end up larger than the object’s real-life size. So, a leaf is going to be super zoomed-in in your final photo or video. So, if you really wanna capture details, these lenses are just amazing, and they can make a massive difference.

what is a macro camera used for

Incredible Depth of Field with Macro Lens

A lot of people have heard of macro lenses in photography, and they understand that if I wanna take a close-up photo of a bug or a leaf, I am going to use this. But why is it good for filmmakers?

Well, let me tell you about the depth of field. These lenses work really well when you are trying to get the depth of field. You will have a very nice bokeh and beautiful blur when you’re shooting with these macro lenses.

Your subject is incredibly crisp, but your backgrounds have that awesome cinematic fall off of depth of field. YouTuber Kellan Reck used the canon 100mm 2.8 lens and this thing is fantastic. Now there is a big debate that there is an L version of this lens and then there is a standard version.

The standard version goes for about $600, and the L version costs about $800. The L version is going to have image stabilization built into the lens and will allow you to get those steady shots without using a tripod but overall, both of them can let you have fantastic results.

Bokeh and Portraits

Macro lenses give you bizarre results. You will get a super bokeh and nice background with a shallow depth of field. Now, why would you want a shallow depth of field? It’s going to give you that cinematic nature that you are looking for.

These 100mm macro lenses open up to 2.8 as their f-stop and that will not only give you that depth of field, but the telephoto nature of this lens is really going to add to it.

A YouTuber Kellan Reck has done a couple of music in the past where he used this macro lens exclusively and it gave such awesome crisp results, and you don’t even need to use it only for close-up videos or photos. You can use these lenses really in any means and all you need is to go a little far away.

Also Visit: Can I do Normal Photography with a Macro Lens

Make a Difference in your Work

You can move around and do anything with this lens. You can add a variety of options using just this lens. What the macro lens is just going to allow you to do is get photos or get footage that you would never see with your normal eye and that is what draws viewers into your work.

People wanna see something in your art that looks different if they might see if they just go out and walk on the street and use their eyes to look around. They wanna see art that can really show them some differences about the world and this lens will let you do that.

Flexibility Issue

Here I don’t mean that you can’t do other types of photography other than macro with a macro lens but if you want to use this macro lens as a normal lens, you need to step back a few yards and then take the shot.

Handling the Lens

Generally, a macro lens is heavier and can be difficult to hold in some situations. These lenses have a smaller depth of field and that’s why they can be slower and for a slower camera, handling is somehow difficult.

Disadvantages of a Macro Lens

Expensive

As compared to extension tubes, the macro lens is more expensive. Although you get better results in your macro shots still, not everybody can afford an expensive macro lens. If you are tight on budget, I would recommend you to start with an extension tube, and once you are able to afford a macro lens, then shift to it.

Handling

The macro lens isn’t as easy as it seems to handle as it is heavier compared to the extension tubes. If you are a beginner, then it must be challenging for you to capture the most perfect shots with a macro lens, for the first few days.

Other Types of Photography

Macro lenses are generally for macro photography but you can also use them for many other types of photography too. If you are a beginner, then I assure you it is not easy to use a macro lens for other types of photography, like portraits and short videos.

Final Verdict

So, these lenses give you the option to have those close-up shots that are really stylistic and it’s also going to give an option to play with some other uses like getting that shallow depth of field and making remarkable videos, but the disadvantage is that these lenses are very expensive, and their work can somehow be done with extension tubes too.

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