How to take a close up photo

Lately I have seen a lot of photos which should show more details - sequin, stitch, maybe some parts of flower or child's eye. My favorite photos are this kind of photography, called macro, so I wanted to share with you simple tip, how to create a good, sharp shot of some close up things.

Those who have a simple camera or use the camera built in your phone may have seen a figure of a little flower as pictured below.

This tulip means your camera will turn to macro photography with focusing on closer elements. You may want to turn off auto focus (AF) and choose the focus distance yourself. This could be fighting for millimeters, so I suggest you to shoot in as bright conditions as possible. If you have shaking hands, a tripod or pile of books/something similar will be your friend to get sharp picture. 

Below you can see a photo taken with macro settings, but AF - as a result the focus is on the ground and behind the main object not the sprout ends witch should be in focus.

The magnolia in the photo below is shot with no macro setting so the camera has found an auto focus point as far as possible.

Sometimes you may want to get the focus on one subject very close and other elements just right after it - out of focus. That is called depth of field and in the camera settings it is the letter F with different numbers. The bigger number follows F letter, the more things will be in focus. The smaller the number the smaller will be line of focus. If you want to see sharp only one part of flower, example stigma, you can use very small F number, like F2 or even F1.8. If you want to see the whole flower sharp, use F8 or different, depending on the size of the subject.

Below I added an example of different of depths of field. First picture is taken on F2 and second - F22.

  

This is my first post about photography so if you want to clear out something mentioned here, feel free to do so in comments!

Thanks for stepping by!