THE BEST Macro

Mold takes many forms, from harmful to helpful, from toxic to delicious. But one thing we never thought mold could be is beautiful. Through the macro lens of Beauty of Science, enjoy this incredible close-up look at four kinds of molds used in food fermentation. As they grow, they look like plants on an alien landscape.

Jens over at Another Perspective came across a batch of tiny insect eggs and decided to record them to see what came out. He set up his camera in time-lapse mode and watched what happened over a period of two weeks. The resulting footage is both amazing and a bit creepy. Look away if you don’t like bugs.

Filmmaker Jan van Ijken captured this amazing microscopic scale time-lapse footage of the development of an amphibious alpine newt. Watch in awe as it grows from a single cell to a complete organism in just 6 minutes. More here.

Photography Jens Heidler of Another Perspective uses ordinary objects to create extraordinary images. To make this video, he captured time-lapse macro footage of M&Ms melting in a fish tank. As the sugary shells slowly dissolve, colorful patterns emerge in the candies’ watery grave.

Photographer Jens Heidler spent more than 30 hours standing in frigid temperatures to shoot this amazing macro imagery of ice crystals as they formed on soap bubbles. Once the bubbles are encased in ice, their texture works like tiny prisms, revealing a rainbow of colors. He also shared some tips and tricks for shooting your own.

Artist Roman De Giuli is known for the eye-catching moving images he makes by mixing paints and inks. His latest work is a sequence of images that resemble satellite photography of the Earth. This time, he made custom paints using materials like pigments, sand, and finely ground stones to create the rich palette of earthy colors.

Solo Slow-Mo Guy Gavin Free turned his macro lens towards a piece of lab equipment called an ultrasonic homogenizer, a device that rapidly vibrates to combine liquids. To capture it moving up to 30,000 times per second, he had to get out the big guns, a Phantom V2511 camera to record movements at 170,000 fps.

Dr. Adrian Smith of Ant Lab is the man you want to see if you’ve got a question about bugs. Among his many buggy pursuits is capturing slow-motion footage of insects as they take flight. In this video, you’ll enjoy a variety of bugs lifting off, many of which are less graceful than you’d think.

Water is critical to the survival of almost all living things. This fascinating time-lapse short film by Christian Stangl provides a close-up look at what happens to organics as they run out of moisture. Stangl captured the images using a combination of macro lenses and microscopes. View a selection of stills on Flickr.

Photography expert Jens Heidler of Another Perspective shows off a neat effect you can create using various mixtures of liquid soap and sugar to create bubbles across the top of a drinking glass. The macro footage reveals all kinds of groovy patterns and gradients of color in the bubble slicks.

We’ve seen how pinball machines are made. Now, thanks to Gavin of The Slow Mo Guys, we can see exactly how they work as they kick steel balls around. He spent some quality time with Jersey Jack’s tricked-out Willy Wonka pinball machine to observe how its electro-mechanical playfield components work.

LaughsMicroscopically uses a scanning electron microscope to take us deeper and deeper inside of a series of integrated circuits dating from 1989 to 2001. These now “vintage” circuits are far less dense than today’s designs, but are still an amazing marvel of engineering viewed in this way.

Macro Room set up various objects and vessels filled with water or paint on a platform and then dropped spheres, pins and balloons on them. They captured the resulting explosions with a slow-mo camera that spun around its edge, creating wild visuals that look like they were computer-generated.

The guys over at COOPH are always sharing nifty photography tips and tricks. This time, they’ve posted a series of playful ideas you can replicate using just your smartphone, miniature figures, and everyday objects to create tiny worlds of whimsy that play with our expectations of scale.

Nature photographer Lothar Lenz captured this incredible macro slow-motion video of hornets in motion, as they fly around, sip water, and live their lives near his home in the Eifel region of Germany. The crystal clear sounds of the buzzing insects are especially immersive with headphones on.

Macrofying’s video gives us a really, really, really up-close look at everyday objects. See if you can guess what you’re looking at before the camera zooms out. We managed to get a couple right, but most of them are pretty tricky to figure out. Be sure to check out their amazing flying macro zoom video while you’re at it.

Filmmaker Rus Khasanov is known for his use of macrophotography of liquids to create colorful abstract art. In this clip, he plays with light, dichroic filters, crystals, and bubbles to produce a hypnotic series of moving images.

Diver and underwater photographer Catrin Pichler introduces us the costasiella kuroshimae, also known as the “leaf slug” or “leaf sheep.” These tiny and unusual marine creatures bridge the gap between plant and animal, as they perform photosynthesis by storing the chloroplasts in the algae they feed on.

From a multi-blade razor to a peanut M&M, Macro Universe takes us really, really up-close and personal with a handful of everyday objects. It always amazes us to see the tiny imperfections and textures in objects which look so smooth and perfect when viewed normally.

Before his passing in 2019, scientist and photographer Andreas Kay captured some amazing imagery of the diverse lifeforms in Ecuador. We especially enjoyed this slow motion, macro footage of a tortoise beetle as it opens its wings and lifts off. He also rigged up a spherical treadmill to shoot footage of insects as they walk.

Photographer Eugene Belsky shows off the kind of incredible close-up images that can be captured with the Venus Laowa 24mm probe lens and a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6k. The razor-sharp 4K footage gets intimate with a variety of edibles, and looks even more spectacular if you’ve got a display that supports HDR.

Photographer Christopher Dormoy created this hypnotic and indescribable montage of macro imagery using a combination of ice, oil, paint, soap, and flowers. Blow it up full screen, and you’ll feel like the temperature in your room dropped by 30 degrees by the time you’re done watching.

Separated by a travel ban, The Slow Mo Guys’ co-host Gavin Free goes solo without his buddy Dan Gruchy in this abridged episode. With the help of Phantom Flex 4K camera and a Laowa probe lens, Gav decided to see what’s actually going on when an Apple Watch ejects water from its speaker ports after going for a swim.

Venus fly trap and sundew plants are known for their carnivorous desire for insects of all kinds. Another Perspective captured some incredibly crisp macro footage of bugs and snails as they attempted to escape from this peril. We were particularly impressed by the beetle who chewed its way out of the plant.

Jens of macro photography channel Another Perspective shares time-lapse footage of a soap bubble he says lasted 10 hours, then explains how he did it. The trick to keeping it alive so long involves the proper mix of water, soap, and glycerine, along with a little heat to keep it moving.

At first glance, you might think you’re looking at imagery of some distant part of the cosmos. In fact, everything you see in this short film was captured in a single shot on a 0.3 square inch area of a chemical reaction. These microscopic visuals were captured to spectacular effect by filmmaker Roman Hill.