APSHEPPARD

Just to take another very convenient, but not cheap approach: The Canon RF-100 Macro is a great lens and goes past 1:1. Also, their MP-E 65 Lens does a great job and goes from 1-5X with no tubes. You would need the EF to RF adapter to use it with the R7, I believe--at least that is the case with my R5. I also like having both a Ring Flash and a LED Ring Light. I am in exactly your shoes--just am too old to do the strenuous field shoots, but am getting a lot of pleasure resuming Macro from what I did when very little automation existed on film cameras. Good luck!

Retired CPO Loc: Travel full time in an RV

All good answers here. There is Macro section here on the Hog. Go to the very bottom of any page and you will find the link to the section that you need!

ABJanes Loc: Jersey Boy now Virginia

We put this together for our Williamsburg Photography Meetup, I think you will find it helpful.

https://youtu.be/ruCVnGsPIbo

Long but thorough..........

ABJanes Loc: Jersey Boy now Virginia

More here.......MACRO

Tim Grey is a very effective educator, I have found his training videos very helpful for post processing techniques i.e. refined edge tool for creating masks.

See his YouTube Video below:

https://timgrey.me/webinar221213

Bridges Loc: Memphis, Charleston SC, now Nazareth PA

Take a look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk1Kidkj9Sk If this doesn't load, type in Tony Northrup Extension tubes for macro photography. He gives some good points and is a starting point. I also recommend looking at the Tokina 100mm macro lens. This lens is highly rated and is well thought of by UHHers that have or have previously owned one. It will perform as well as any of the OEM lenses I have tested it against and is about 40% less expensive than the OEM equivalents. Someone suggested a macro/micro rail. This is a very good suggestion for shooting still subjects since minute movements can impact your focus point, that being very shallow. Focus stacking is one way to increase the depth of field but you usually need a post-processing application to do that. The value of a good macro lens in the 100mm range is that it also makes an ideal lens for portrait photography. I know two professional photographers in the area that used the Tokina lens as their studio portrait lens.
Good luck with your journey. There are lots of information right here on UHH that you can tap into. While I do some macro photography, there are a number of people on this site much better qualified to guide you with learning about macro photography. Good luck.

Picture Taker Loc: Michigan Thumb

Go on line and look up Mike Moats. He is a great macro instructor and has a lot of free info.

Ednsb Loc: Santa Barbara

that lens is a 1 to 2 ‘macro’. You can get RF extension tubes which will take you to 1 to 1 or better depending on the lens you put at the end (I use my 50mm 1.8), close filters or buy the RF 100mm Macro which is 1 to 1 and a super sharp lens for things beyond macro.

PAR4DCR Loc: A Sunny Place

You might want to ask your question in the macro section of UHH. Much knowledge there.

Don

Picture Taker Loc: Michigan Thumb

Look up http://www.tinylandscape.com/anbout

MrPhotog

Steve, photomacrography is a wonderful field of photography which can be enjoyed indoors—a big advantage in winter— or outdoors.

With your camera’s APC sized sensor the 35 mm lens is a ‘normal’ focal length, and equivalent to a 50 mm lens on a full-frame sensor.

Lets ignore reproduction ratios like 1:1 or 1:2 for a moment. They don’t make a lot of sense when comparing cameras with different film or sensor sizes.



There are two basic choices for getting omages with greater

mikee

This sounds like my life. I'm starting with a 90mm tamron on a nikon body. That will get me 1:1. Cheap flash that I can manually adjust power output with a diffuser. I second the advice to watch Allan Walls videos. I purchased a reversing ring and an enlarger lens, bellows, and focusing rail for up to 3:1. Now I need to find a bug.

stan0301 Loc: Colorado

I use a 180 a lot - and haves Zeiss 500 f5.6 - which is interesting - also a Questar is sort of a long distance microscope

wdross Loc: Castle Rock, Colorado

If you want to continue field macro, consider getting a used Olympus E-M1 or E-M5 and this next year purchase the OMDS 90mm f3.5 Pro IS 4X macro lens. This should work well for field work especially with the IS to help eliminate the need for a tripod at 4 times lifesize.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

The Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 is not able to do 1:1 on it's own... It's only capable of 1:2 or 0.50X magnification, half "life size". Some would argue that's not "true" macro level of magnification, but many lenses capable of 1:2 have been called macro over the years. You can add macro extension tubes behind the lens to push it to higher magnification, but frankly I wouldn't bother.

A 35mm lens is too short focal length for higher magnification macro photography. It will simply put you way too close to your subject. As it is, at it's native 1:2 magnification and closest focus, you will only have about 2.5 or 3 inches "working distance" between the front of the lens and your subject. If you push the lens to full 1:1 by adding an extension tube behind it, you'll have even less working distance. That won't work with a lot of live subjects and even with inanimate you will often have problem blocking light on the subject.

I suggest you consider a longer focal length for macro...

- Canon's best macro lens for the R-series cameras is the RF 100mm f/2.8 Macro IS USM, which not only gets to full 1:1 on it's own, it actually goes past it to 1.4:1 magnification! With this focal length, at 1X or life size magnification you can expect to have about 5 inches between the very front of the lens (without lens hood installed) and your subject. At the even higher 1.4X this lens is capable of doing on it's own, you'll have 3.5 or 4 inches of working distance. The Canon RF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM is on sale right now for $999 at authorized dealers (regularly $1399).

- A bit smaller, lighter and more affordable is the Canon RF 85mm f/2 Macro IS STM. Like your 35mm, this lens is a 1:2 capable lens on it's own. But the longer focal length will be more practical for a wide variety of macro and close up subjects. It will give more working room.... about 7 or 7.5 inches at the lens 0.5X magnification closest focus distance... or roughly 3 inches with macro extension tubes added to bring it to full 1.0X magnification.

- You also could adapt a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro or EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM Macro. Both are 1:1 capable and excellent macro lenses. These lenses are also "internal focusing", like the RF 100mm Macro lens. This means they don't grow longer when focused closer. Your 35mm and the 85mm mentioned above are not "IF" lenses. Their barrels extend quite a bit when focused closer, which can be another factor reducing working distance between the front of the lens and the subject. Something else unique to these two Canon EF 100mm Macro lenses, as well as the RF 100mm, is that there is option to add a separately-sold tripod mounting ring to each of them. This is very handy for tripod or monopod shooting and an unusual option at this focal length. No one else that I'm aware of makes or has made a macro lens shorter than 150mm that can be fitted with a tripod ring. (Canon makes one, more about that below.)

- Canon's MP-E 65mm Macro is a specialized lens. It's capable of ultra high magnification.. up to 5:1 or five times life size. It can fill your viewfinder with a grain of rice! However, it is ONLY a macro lens. It can do no less than 1:1 (life size) magnification. It essentially picks up where many other macro lenses leave off. It also is manual focus only and is not an IF lens. It does include a tripod mounting ring and usually needs to be on a tripod because there is a lot of risk of shake blur at such high magnifications. I do not recommend the MP-E 65mm for someone just starting to shoot macro or for a first or only macro lens. (Do not confuse it with the excellent Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 USM Macro lens, which is a 1:1 lens for APS-C Canon DSLRs... nice and compact, but slightly short for some subjects.)

- There are third party macro lenses that are very good to excellent and can be adapted for use on your camera. Tamron's latest 90mm (model 017) is their very best version after more than three decades making previous, very good macro lenses. Sigma's 105mm rivals the legendary Nikon 105mm "Micro" lens. Tokina makes one of the most affordable 100mm macro lenses, though it's a little lower performance (image quality, focus speed) than the Tamron and Sigma. Also, the Sigma and Tamron are both IF lenses. The Tokina is not. As of now all these are only available in EF mount. So you'd need to adapt them for use on an R-series camera.

- There are also some manual focus/manual aperture third party macro lenses already being made for your camera. A lot of macro photographers prefer to use manual focus and settings, anyway. (But if you plan to also use the lens for non-macro work, you may prefer an autofocus lens.) There are manual focus/manual aperture lenses being made in RF mount that your camera uses, so no adapter would be needed. Of these, I would particularly take note of the Laowa 85mm, 90mm and 100mm "Ultra Macro" (by Venus Optics). Those are capable of very high magnification on their own... 2X or double life size.

There are even longer macro lenses... 150mm, 180mm and 200mm. However they are harder to hold steady... more likely to need a tripod (in fact, most of them include a tripod mounting ring). Partly this is due to the longer focal length. But also they naturally render very shallow depth of field, so are more likely to need to be stopped down, which in turn means using slower shutter speeds (and/or higher ISOs). While these longer macro lenses give even more working space that can be useful when shooting dangerous or very shy subjects, they're somewhat more specialized than a lens in the 90mm, 100mm, 105mm range I'm recommending.

There are lots of excellent books on the subject, if interested. John Shaw's Closeups in Nature is called "the bible of macro photography" by some people. It's an older book, from the days of film. But most of the principles remain the same in the digital age. If you can find a copy of it, I recommend it. Some other "old school" macro and close-up photography authors I recommend are Tim Fitzharris, Joe & Mary MacDonald, John & Barbara Gerlach, Heather Angel. Some of those may have been updated for digital, plus there are many more modern books about macro and closeup photography on Amazon, including some by authors I know such as Bryan Peterson and David Taylor. Another good source of books on these subjects is Thriftbooks.com, if you don't mind something someone else has already read! A closely related subject you might want to start exploring is "focus stacking", a multi-shot and post-processing technique used to overcome the limitations of depth of field at higher magnification.

Macro photography is a lot of fun. Good luck getting started.

P.S. Your R7 camera has an APS-C size sensor. It measures approx. 13x22mm. When we talk about 1:1 or "life size" magnification, that means the lens will render an area the same size as your camera's sensor: 13x22mm. To put that into perspective, the smallest coin in the U.S., the 10 cent dime is about 17mm diameter. So at full 1:1 it would fit on the longer axis of your camera's sensor, but will be cropped a little top and bottom. The 1:2 or half life size that your RF 35mm f/1.8 lens is capable of will be able to render a 26x44mm area on it's own. The U.S. 25 cent coin, a quarter, is about 24mm diameter. so would easily be photographed in its entirety at this level of magnification.

You asked about it... For best quality, my recommendation is always to crop your images in post-processing as little as possible. (Along the same vein, I also see no reason to ever use an in-camera crop or "digital zoom" or a lower quality image. You can always make a lower resolution copy of an image later... You can never add resolution without some trade-offs.)

gouldopfl

True Macro needs to be 1:1 which you can't achieve with extension tubes.