Awesome Macro

With builds like this and this, maker Giaco Whatever isn’t exactly known for his subtlety. So when he wanted to shoot a promo video for an upcoming Kickstarter campaign, he not only busted out one of those crazy Laowa probe lenses, but he fabricated a camera mount for an industrial robot to give it motion control.

Director Louie Schwartzberg’s documentary Fantastic Fungi: The Magic Beneath Us takes viewers deep into the underground world of mycelium and mushrooms. Beyond their abilities to feed and heal, it further explores how fungi can be part of massive, interconnected networks.

Motion artist Thomas Blanchard’s colorful short film envisions an entire universe that lives inside of our eyes. What makes the vibrant visuals even more amazing is that they were entirely created with paint, ink, oil, and soap, without reliance on CGI or digital effects.

This new channel is a collaboration by SciShow host Hank Green, musician Andrew Huang, and microorganism enthusiast James Weiss. It delves deep into the world of the trillions of microscopic organisms that surround us. We recommend starting off with Meet the Microcosmos for a primer to this fascinating universe.

Rus Khasanov’s experimental short film features vivid and colorful imagery created by shooting macro images of blobs of specially-formulated paints colliding to create new and larger formations, which are at times reminiscent of celestial bodies. Music by Dmitry Evgrafov.

Macrophotography experts Beauty of Science captured incredible close-up footage of the interactions between water, ice, vinegar, and other substances to demonstrate endothermic processes in front of a high-resolution thermal camera. If you haven’t seen Getting Hot, it’s worth a watch too.

Have you ever wondered what happens to a pill once you swallow it? In this video from photographer Ben Ouaniche of Macro Room, we get an incredible close-up look at medications as they dissolve in a bath of water. It appears the imagery was sped up for added effect.

Photographer Roman De Giuli is an expert at shooting macro images of colorful fluids for artistic effect. Most of his clips feature multiple shots, but this one is simply a 3-minute video of a single fluid, working all on its own to create visual magic. We know you don’t have an 8K display, so just watch at the highest resolution you can.

Macro photography series Beautiful Chemistry presents an up-close look at the formation and behavior of bubbles, with different chemical solutions and electrical charges producing some very different volumes, sizes, and arrangements of the air-filled orbs. The accompanying soundtrack is wonderfully soothing.

Artist Roman De Giuli captured this incredibly vibrant and sharp short film using paints, fluids, pigments, and sparkly bits poured onto paper. Shot with an 8K camera for extra detail, and enhanced with HDR if your display supports it. It’s amazing how much the images look like galaxies.

The Slow Mo Guys took their pricey Phantom high-speed camera, mounted it sideways, attached a macro probe lens to it, and then focused it inside the vortex created by a self-stirring tumbler. The resulting slow-motion footage is a truly amazing look at fluid dynamics.

Warped Perception takes an up-close look at a highly critical, but underappreciated element of every rocket launch – the igniters which get the rocket fuel going. The result is some truly stunning slow-motion macro footage. Watch in 4K if you can.

Gavin and Dan of The Slow Mo Guys turn their attention inwards, capturing detailed macro footage that shows how the pupil of a human eye reacts to light. Gav used one of those unique Laowa macro probe lenses to get right up to Dan’s peepers.

Artist Thomas Blanchard provides a tempting video for coffee drinkers, with a series of macro visual compositions filled with the colors of coffee and cream. Now before you dream of drinking it all up, there’s also a bit of oil and paint mixed in for effect.

Macro Room calls this video “Everyday Objects From Inside”, but it’s more of a continuation of their Everyday Objects in Macro. Except this time, all of the shots are zooming out from impossibly tight angles. We’d really love to know how they did it.

Waterballet creates incredible slow-motion macro videos using colored inks and water, along with ambient musical tracks to accompany the mesmerizing footage. The scenes look like weather fronts moving in on an alien landscape. More on Vimeo.

We’ve seen popcorn popped in slow-motion before, but that was “only” at 6,200 fps. Warped Perception captured the explosive force of heated popcorn kernels at 30,000 fps in front of the macro lens of their Phantom v2512 ultra high-speed camera.

BBC Earth show The Hunt captured crisp macro footage of hotrod ants, as they make their way through the scorching 150ºF+ Namib desert, where it’s so hot that they would die if they stopped in the sun for even a few seconds. But the extreme heat isn’t their only foe.

Macro Room’s latest video sees them submerging a variety of objects into a tank of water and then injecting ink, creating otherworldly images for split-seconds. The montage at the end is one of the sickest things we’ve ever seen.

You’ll want to put your headphones on and go full-screen to get the most out of Stereokroma’s hypnotic video, featuring super crisp macro photography of frozen fruits and veggies being thawed, accompanied by appropriate, if not exactly realistic ASMR sound effects.

This close-up video by Ahmet Özkan shows an ant being hog-tied by a spider. Not only is the photographic detail incredible, there’s an extra-special surprise if you stick around until the end.