Winners Announced for Nikon's Small World Microscopic Photo Competition

Creating microscopic or macroscopic photography requires considerable skill and proper equipment. But you don’t need to be a professional photographer to appreciate the fascinating world that this mind-blowing imaging opens up.

To be clear on terminology, you might assume that images from the contest will be either "macro" or "micro" photography. There seems to be some variance in different lens manufacturers calling a lens "macro" or “micro." Both terms describe essentially the same type of lens: one with fixed high-focal length of 50-200mm that allowing capture of finer details in small subjects. They’re actually no different.

Those two terms, however, are not to be confused with microphotography, or “microscopy." Microscopy is created at much higher magnification, either by special optical microscope or simply by connecting a camera to a microscope. In the stunning photographs from the contest, magnification up to 40X from the lenses alone were achieved.

Image stacking is another technique used in microscopy. Similar to but not quite the same process as astrophotography, image stacking involves a series of images being combined to deal with the extremely small depth of field that microscopes produce. (In astrophotography, stacking is done to gather faint data and combat digital noise.)

Feel free to provide a link in the comments below to macrophotography or microscopy you've created.