Book review: Mastering Macro Photography by David Taylor

This is a nice-looking book on macro photography in general. I is large, almost square, and has high print quality, which is important because it is filled with beautiful macro pictures. It provides a broad introduction to the area and treat everything from equipment, technique, lighting, post production, all the way to choosing interesting subjects. It is easy to read but still provides a lot of depth in the topics studied. So there is a lot to learn here.

The book covers an area that is way wider than insect photography. As such, quite a bit of the information in it is less relevant and sometimes not the right approach when shooting insects. For example, as all books on macro photography, it puts a lot of emphasis on using tripods and very carefully framing the image. It also uses ambient light most of the time and uses long shutter speeds. Most of this won't work with (moving) insects. However, the book does mention that and indicates that for certain topics you should use different techniques.

The main drawback of the book is that it was first published in 2017, which means that it describes the situation around 2015, that is, some eight years ago. In those days most people were still using older DSLR cameras, and that is what the book primarily focuses on. Such camera have a number of issues that are especially problematic when shooting insects, like poor viewfinder view under low light conditions using a narrow aperture, difficulties with autofocus, and so on. Many of these are no longer relevant when using a modern mirrorless camera. So some techniques are a bit outdated.

Should you buy the book? It is definitely a good book and I did learn a number of things from it that I am going to apply in the future. In the Netherlands it was really cheap (some 15 euros at Amazon.nl), but in other countries it seems to be twice as expensive.  You can obtain it here at Amazon.