ideal lens for wild flower close ups?

What do you recommend as an ideal lens (for use with a Nikon D40) for
close up work with wild flowers?

or is it better to use extension tubes with a regular lens??

Any advice much appreciated as I don't know too much about the
technicalities here - but I guess what I need is a good depth of field
coupled with a close focus capability.

Mark

wrote in message
ups.com...
What do you recommend as an ideal lens (for use with a Nikon D40) for
close up work with wild flowers?

or is it better to use extension tubes with a regular lens??

Any advice much appreciated as I don't know too much about the
technicalities here - but I guess what I need is a good depth of field
coupled with a close focus capability.

Mark


Hi.

DoF and Close Focus are almost mutually exclusive. The closer you get the
smaller the DoF.

The only way round this is to use a very small aperture, which will require
a long exposure, so what you need is a good tripod.

Using extension tubes to get Close Focus usually results in almost
non-existant DoF, and reduces the "effective" aperture of the lens.

DSLRs have a seemingly better DoF, because of their small sensors, but also
have problems with using small apertures, and non-macro lenses are usually
computed to produce their best results with a moderatly wide aperture.

Macro and nearly macro is a bit of a specialised subject. Nikon has Macro
lenses, but I am fairly certain they do not have the built in motors
required to AF with the D40, and they are expensive.

Roy G

On Jun 20, 2:10 pm, "Roy G" wrote:

Macro and nearly macro is a bit of a specialised subject. Nikon has Macro
lenses, but I am fairly certain they do not have the built in motors
required to AF with the D40, and they are expensive.


The non-Nikon macros (Tamron, Sigma, Tokina) are a lot cheaper and all
optically excellent. I have a Tamron 90mm and it is very well suited
to flower photography (and portraits) in addition to macro work. It
does not have a motor, though, so manual focus will be necessary on
the d40.

wrote:
What do you recommend as an ideal lens (for use with a Nikon D40) for
close up work with wild flowers?

or is it better to use extension tubes with a regular lens??

Any advice much appreciated as I don't know too much about the
technicalities here - but I guess what I need is a good depth of field
coupled with a close focus capability.

DOF is a mechanical function of the aperture. It's a law of physics and
it is not easy to break that law.

You choice of lens can be made based on the focal length maximum
aperture and quality.

I like a little longer than normal focal length for nature use. It is
especially useful if you want to include some wildlife like a butterfly as
you can be a little further away. It also often makes it easier to work
with a lens that is a little longer than average.

A larger maximum aperture can be very handy as you can reduce the DOF
and use that to eliminate or reduce the effect of an undesirable background
while still maintaining the ability to have a large DOF by choosing a
smaller aperture.

Quality is usually a matter of price.


Mark

--
Joseph Meehan

Dia 's Muire duit

Roy G wrote:
Hi.

DoF and Close Focus are almost mutually exclusive. The closer you get the
smaller the DoF.

The only way round this is to use a very small aperture, which will require
a long exposure, so what you need is a good tripod.

Agreed. But if you're outdoors and the flowers wave
in the wind ... all out of options.

BugBear

On 20 Jun, 09:51, wrote:
What do you recommend as an ideal lens (for use with a Nikon D40) for
close up work with wild flowers?

or is it better to use extension tubes with a regular lens??

Any advice much appreciated as I don't know too much about the
technicalities here - but I guess what I need is a good depth of field
coupled with a close focus capability.

I have a 105mm f/2.8 Sigma macro that I am very happy with. It is the
clearest of all of my lenses. I considered it for portraits but it is
a bit too long for that. Mine has a Canon mount and I use it on my
300D but I expect that it is available with a Nikon mount.

As the others have said, good flower photos are still a challenge
since good depth of field means narrow aperture which means long
exposure which means a tripod and a still subject. On the other hand,
some photos do benefit from a low depth of field.

--
Seán Ó Leathlóbhair

On Jun 20, 4:51 am, wrote:
What do you recommend as an ideal lens (for use with a Nikon D40) for
close up work with wild flowers?

or is it better to use extension tubes with a regular lens??

Any advice much appreciated as I don't know too much about the
technicalities here - but I guess what I need is a good depth of field
coupled with a close focus capability.

Mark


The one macro (Nikon speak Micro) lens that will autofocus on the D40
is the 105 f2.8 micro, great lens BTW. If you are only working in
macro say 1:1 (lifesize on sensor) to 1:3, you really don't need auto
focus, manual is more accurate, that said the viewfinder on the D40
(my experience is with a D70) is very dim and a little difficult to
manual focus.
Depth of field decreases with the increase in magnification, so at 1:1
you have very little depth of field. Also you loose light with
increased magnification. A macro (micro) lens extended to 1:1 mag has
an exposure of 2 f-stops less than at infinity, so if your meter reads
f11 at infinity the esposure would be f5.6 at 1:1 mag, or f11 at 1/100
of a second at infinity would be f11 at 1/25 at 1:1mag.
Tripods are a good thing with macro because of this light loss.
Another alternative would be add on lenses, Canon makes very good set
that come as close as possible to maintaining lens image quality. They
screw in to the front threads on a lens and can be used on any model
camera or lens. These won't give you the magnification of a macro
lens, but will work with most flowers. Telephoto lenses work best with
add on lenses.

Tom

On Jun 20, 3:51 am, wrote:
What do you recommend as an ideal lens (for use with a Nikon D40) for
close up work with wild flowers?

or is it better to use extension tubes with a regular lens??

Any advice much appreciated as I don't know too much about the
technicalities here - but I guess what I need is a good depth of field
coupled with a close focus capability.

Mark

Some considerations. Many macro zoom lenses are macro only in the
longest focal length position (highest zoom). Thus you do not have
control of perspective. Extension tubes effectively increase the
actual object and image distance. Perspective is actually a function
of object distance rather than focal length.

For better perspective control, I prefer supplemental or plus lenses,
also called "closeup" lenses." Too large an object distance on a
macro photo "compresses" depth. While this makes depth of field
easier to control, I don't like the effect. I prefer shorter
distances, and shoot with as high an f/# as the lens will go.

Roy G wrote:
Macro and nearly macro is a bit of a specialised subject. Nikon has
Macro lenses,

Which Nikon calls Micro for whatever reason

but I am fairly certain they do not have the built in
motors required to AF with the D40

Easy enough to check. From http://www.nikonusa.com/template.php?cat=1&grp=5:
Close-Up Lenses
105mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor
60mm f/2.8D AF Micro-Nikkor
200mm f/4D ED-IF AF Micro-Nikkor


So the 105mm does have AF-S, the 60 and 200 don't. Price for the 105 at B&H:
$739.95
Of course there are also macro lenses from the usual third party
manufacturers.

One cheap way to get started with macro photography is to use close-up
lenses that are screwed in at the front of a regular lens. They run around
25$ US for a set of four.

jue

acl wrote:
On Jun 20, 2:10 pm, "Roy G" wrote:

Macro and nearly macro is a bit of a specialised subject. Nikon has Macro
lenses, but I am fairly certain they do not have the built in motors
required to AF with the D40, and they are expensive.


The non-Nikon macros (Tamron, Sigma, Tokina) are a lot cheaper and all
optically excellent. I have a Tamron 90mm and it is very well suited
to flower photography (and portraits) in addition to macro work. It
does not have a motor, though, so manual focus will be necessary on
the d40.

The OP needs to be aware of a couple more bits of
information here.

First, 90mm and 105mm macro lenses are more or less in a
sweet spot for ease of optical design. There simply
aren't any bad ones! The cheapest ones ever made were
pretty good, optically.

Spending money does not buy better optical results, but
it can buy better quality of build (ruggedness), more
convenience, ease of operation... that sort of thing.

It can also buy frills that might not be so useful. To
be honest, for most photomacrography there isn't any
need for the electronics in modern lenses! Manual focus
usually works much better. It also happens that using
the blink-on-over-exposure LCD display or even a
histogram is a better method for exposure control,
using manual mode, than is the light meter with or
without automatic exposure control.

However, the OP specifically mentioned flowers, and if
they are halfway large flowers it might well be that AF
and AE will be useful. But the higher the
magnification, the less so...

Hence the suggestion that a 3rd party Brand X lense
might be useful is a *very* good one. In fact, I use a
30 year old manual focus off brand (okay, Kiron is a
cult, not a brand x) 105mm macro lense and wouldn't
trade it straight across for a Nikkor 105mm macro.

If I dropped that lense and broke it into 100 pieces
tomorrow, I would immediately be looking for another
one on eBay.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)