Even though this camera does have a macro mode in the mode dial, you can see here you can turn the mode dial to the flower icon. Using this macro mode, doesn’t allow the camera to focus any closer. That’s really just up to the lens. This flower icon means, the camera is set to macro and you have a couple options, you have objects, food, this is specifically food in a restaurant, flower and creative. The creative mode, if we go in here, I’ll press set, will allow you to change the depth of field which means your adjusting the aperture and allowing the camera to set a proper shutter speed for you.

However, with the mode dial set to the macro mode, you don’t have control over ISO. I can still change my white balance, which is very handy. So if you wanted the camera judge the proper ISO for you, that’s okay just go ahead and set the appropriate white balance by pressing the WB button here and I’ll choose daylight. I’m assuming we’re outdoors taking a picture of a flower for example. Press set and I want to make sure that aperture in this creative close-up mode is properly set as well.

I’m taking a picture of a flower. I don’t want to have the background in focus so I need a wide aperture setting but I don’t want to be too wide so that not the entire flower itself is in focus. So I use my dial in the front to move this up to five. Now, you’ll notice that down here, the focusing mode is set to the multi-focusing option, which I personally don’t like because I want to tell the camera where I want to focus. So I’ll press the quick menu button right up here and I’ll choose the single area focus and then press set.

Now I have my brackets in the center of the frame just like I always do. I can position them over my subject. Press the shutter button halfway, recompose the image and press the shutter button the rest of the way to take the picture. This camera can focus at a range of about 30cm or about a foot away from the subject. Any closer than that and it probably won’t be able to find a focus.

If your subject is very, very small and you want to fill as much of the frame with that subject, what I would do is zoom in. Zoom in all the way to 45 with this lens and now I need to be just a little bit farther away from my subject but with the zoom, it ends up looking like I’m much closer. So again, I’ll place my focusing brackets over my subject. Press the shutter button halfway. I’m able to lock focus and now I can recompose because I don’t necessarily want that in the center of the frame and now I can just go ahead and press the shutter button the rest of the way to take the picture.

If you don’t want to mess with the mode dial or anything, you can just use the standard program mode. Again, even with the P mode or the program mode, you want to zoom in all the way to fill the entire frame with your subject and again, place the focusing brackets over the subject. Press the shutter button halfway, recompose the image and press the shutter button the rest of the way to take the picture.

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