Awesome Macro

Soldering surface-mounted components on circuit boards can be challenging without industrial soldering equipment. But maker.moekoe shows off a method for soldering multiple components using soldering paste and a temperature-controlled clothes iron to melt all of the solder into place at once.

The Laowa 24mm Probe Lens has enabled some pretty amazing views of the world. Jens from Another Perspective stuck the long and skinny macro lens inside a piano to give us an up-close and personal look at its strings, hammers, and other mechanical components.

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.

We now present the most satisfying 46 seconds of video you’ll see today. Wildlife photographer David Weiller captured this close-up footage of a giant fire red millipede marching its 160-or-so feet across a branch in Madagascar’s Marojejy National Park. Crank up the volume for immersive forest sounds.

Jens over at Another Perspective spent a year growing various kinds of mushrooms in his basement and filmed their progress. After capturing roughly five terabytes of images, he compiled them into this fascinating three-minute time-lapse video. Is anyone else hungry now?

Filmmaker Thomas Blanchard created this captivating music video for the electronic track Bellatrix by Sébastien Guérive. He created the monochrome imagery by saturating hot water with chemicals that spontaneously crystallize when cooled. Go full screen, dim the lights, and crank up your headphones to 11 for this one.

Sandro Bocci of JuliaSetLab and Dugong Films creates art by photographing the interactions between liquids, as see through the lens of a microscope. Watch as these puddles of fluids of varying viscosities form patterns that look like the clouds and planets of a distant galaxy.

Object pointed their macro camera lens at ordinary objects like wires and bolts so we could see what they look like when they’re cut in half. The slow-motion and sound effects help to heighten the impact of the visuals.

Thanks to the photographic prowess and entomological expertise of Ant Lab, we’ve seen some amazing close-up footage of insects. This time, watch tropical butterflies as they emerge from their chrysalises and take flight. Then take a look at the tropical rainforest exhibit at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences.

Filmmaker Thomas Blanchard captured this series of macro time-lapse images of insects being born juxtaposed with the carnivorous plants laying in wait for unsuspecting creatures to wander into their sticky and deadly traps. According to Blanchard, all insects captured were released after filming.

While unable to travel in 2020, Vadim Sherbakov worked on a project closer to home. The filmmaker created this macro video using inks, alcohol, soaps, and household chemicals, resulting in colorful and ethereal moving images. The entire work was shot with a DJI Pocket 2 camera with a macro lens attached.

Dr. Adrian Smith of Ant Lab is back with another amazing slow motion macro video of insects taking flight. This time, you’ll witness a variety of mantises, weevils, flies, and other bugs lifting off. The 6,000 FPS footage reveals the normally unseen but dramatic differences in how each insect takes flight.

Martin Kristiansen of My Microscopic World used a polarized light source, a lab microscope, and an iPhone to capture these incredibly detailed, colorful, and otherworldly images of insect larvae, isopods, and tiny crustaceans. Check out more amazing close-up images on his Instagram feed.

With a good macro lens, proper lighting, and a high-speed camera, it’s possible to capture some incredible images. This video of what it looks like when an eye drop hits the front of an eyeball reveals all sorts of neat details that you’d normally miss in the blink of an eye.

In real-time and without a good macro lens, it’s hard to appreciate just how awesome insects can be. In this video from Ant Lab, we get a wonderful close-up look at seven species of moths for a look at their beautiful wing patterns and colors, captured at 6000 frames per second. Isn’t nature amazing?

Macrofying takes us on a deep dive inside of a single cell in a honeycomb to see what bees see… and even what they can’t as they work their macro zoom magic all the way down to the microscopic level. We’re pretty sure those are individual sugar crystals there at the end.

Photographer Jens Heidler of Another Perspective offers a series of crisp close-up stills and video footage of animals and insects, revealing incredible details not visible to the naked eye. Check out his video on flash diffusers for some tips on capturing great macro images.

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 to full screen, and you’ll feel like the temperature in your room dropped by 30 degrees by the time you’re done watching.

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.

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.