Canon G10: Set for Macro/Close-up Scene

Setting up a Macro picture is quite simple; there are really just a few things you need to know.

First thing is I would recommend turning the flash off and if you are in a low light situation in increasing the ISO. You can‘t do that. I’ll show you how to use the flash in a second, but for now we’ll turn this off. Go ahead and press the flash button right here to access the flash options and with the dial just move over to flash off and it’s set.

Next thing is your white balance, set this accordingly to your light source. Press the shortcut button or the Function button. In my case I have the shortcut button set up to it so it’s pretty easy and I’m going to go with daylight because I’m assuming we’re outdoors. Press sets, go ahead and press the Macro button, it a little flower icon right here on the left navigation button and choose Macro. Press set, once your flash has been turned off, your white balance is set accordingly, I have my Macro set up, and I want to make sure my ISO is set up correctly.

Now 80 ISO will give me the best color as possible, if I have enough light that’s what I will highly recommend using. Go ahead and turn your ISO dial right up here to 80 and to test wether you have enough light or not just go ahead and press the shutter button halfway. You don’t have to nicely focus as long as your picture is composed the way you want it. Go on and press the shutter button halfway, you’ll see down here what your shutter speed setting is at, mine is currently set at 200 and this I know I can handhold. I have a lot of light but in your case you maybe in a lower light situation where this will deep down below 160 of a second at which point you may want to increase the ISO to bring that up to 160 of a second or at least choose something that you know you can handhold.

If 80 ISO is not enough and this figure is less than 160 of a second using a tripod is not an option. I would release the shutter button, increase the ISO and try again. Now if I can see that I’m at 1500 of a second. In your case if you’re and you want here 160 of a second you should be fine just hold the camera very, very steady and you go ahead and take your picture. If you’ve tried this and increasing the ISO still doesn’t get you enough light, you can go ahead and use the flash.

In this case, what I would recommend doing go on and turn the flash on, press the flash button right here and turn that on. Press the set button because the flash is so close to the subject I’m afraid that it will blow out and I’ll lose a lot of detail in my picture, so I rarely use the flash with Macro pictures. However, if it’s absolutely necessary if the ISO is not enough to increase the amount of light, I’ll use the flash but I will turn down the exposure of the flash. What that means press your Function button and go down to the flash exposure compensation setting and turn that down to minus two, minus one, minus one 1/3 whatever you think is necessary. You don’t want to have it at zero because I can pretty much guarantee this will be too much flash.

So I like to turn it down to minus and again you may want to try one picture and see if it’s enough light or turn it up a little to minus one and 2/3 or minus one 1/3 and so on, so ahead and press set. If you are using the flash, I would recommend keeping the ISO a little bit brighter to still have enough light or anything that’s in the background because a weak flash may not get as far as you want but it won’t blow out the subject as well.

So now my white balance is set up properly, I have my Macro turned on, m y ISO is set up properly, in this case my flash is turned on. Again most of the time I don’t use flash and my flash exposure compensation is set up accordingly because I am focusing on something very, very close. As with every picture, press the shutter button halfway first, focus on your target, recompose the image with that shutter button pressed halfway and then go ahead and press the button the rest of the way to take the picture.

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