A definition for you, today.

“Macro” (or as Nikon calls it, “Micro”) means “showing ordinary things large”.

But true Macro, following the official definition, means the ability to obtain a 1:1 ratio between the object’s size and the size of the image on the sensor. So a 1cm long bug casts an image 1cm long onto your sensor.

A lens can be a normal lens (not macro, usually 1:5 or worse, meaning a tiny bug image on the sensor), or a “macro featured lens” (perhaps 1:4, so that would make the bug 1/4 cm long on the sensor), or a true macro lens, like this one:

See the “1:1” marking? This, as you have seen, can give you cool images of day-to-day objects in a new light. Like this, the top of a knife:

Or this:

Yup. That’s the front of a microwave.

Or finally this:

Cute eh?

If you have a macro lens, try to shoot a few normal objects close-up, in your kitchen.