Macro Photography vs. Micro Photography--in order to show the world of tiny things such as my photo above--Dandelion in a Storm. You need a special macro lens. These can be very expensive so I use Magnifying filters that screw in to the front of your lens--a set of 4 filters can cost as little as $15 on Ebay. The photo above using these cheap filters is very high quality by anyone's standards. The secret being that I used a very small f-stop (f/22). This increased the focal range to the max. I also used a tri-pod and studio flashes which froze the image to increase sharpness.Now the difference between Micro and Macro. The current definition of Macro-photography refers to the image captured on the film plane of the camera is the same size or larger than the actual subject. The designation 1:4 Macro means one quarter the size of actual Macro, while 1:1 Macro means full size Macro. Micro-photography refers to the image captured on the film plane is much larger than the actual subject (to the extent that an actual microscope could be used). Both show small subjects larger than life when they're enlarged, but as it goes Micro images are extremely close studies of your subject. As close as the camera got to Dandelions, it would still be considered only a Macro shot and not a Micro shot.
