#because the mushroom season isn't yet upon us here

[lindagoesmushrooming]

hi linda :) im going to a redwood forest this weekend and there'll be tons of mushrooms. i'm new to photography, and i was hoping you could give some tips for photographing mushrooms? thank you!!

Yay for tons of mushrooms! Have fun! 😁

But oh god, where to start... Well, firstly it depends what you're using for photography. Is it a phone camera or semi-pro/pro camera? If it's a camera, then what kind of lens do you have?

A lot of mushrooms tend to be on the small side, so the best thing would be to have macro lens for your camera or a clip on macro lens for your phone (I don't have one myself, though).

I don't have a fancy macro lens but I've been using a Tamron 70-300mm F/4-5.6 Di LD Macro lens for years that's both a telephoto and a macro lens. The only downside of it - I have to step back to take photos. The longer the lens, the longer the minimum shooting distance. So, if you use a phone or a lens that's, say 18-55mm, you can get really close to your object which also works very well for mushrooms. I find that some of the prettiest mushroom photos are taken from below when you can see the gills or the light making the cap transparent. You should be prepared to bend and crawl a lot. 😆 (Not photography related, but wear something you're not afraid to stain. Also - ticks. Be wary of those.)

If your equipment allows it, use large aperture. The smaller the number, the larger the aperture. Yes, it's weird like that. The larger the aperture, the more light is let in. F-stops of 1.4 to 5.6 are considered large apertures. A large aperture will give you a shallow depth of field (you know, when the object or only a part of it is in focus, but the background is all blurred out?). Luckily, mushrooms are small objects, so you don't necessarily need the largest aperture out there.

In my own experience, though, the coolest mushrooms (especially clusters of them) mock me and grow deep in the bushes or wherever I can't reach them/get close, so for such cases having a zoom lens can come in handy.

Some of the examples:

This is a recent pic I posted, taken with a Fujifilm hybrid (mirrorless) camera.

Not a mushroom, but still something small, taken with a Samsung phone (by my sister in law, not me, though).

Taken with a Nikon dslr, using the Tamron lens in its macro mode.

Taken with the same camera and lens, but using its telephoto mode (the mushrooms were located far from me).

I hope this helps at least a bit!