Macro Photography - new equipment I am excited to use in spring.

Narcissus Bulb Fly - a flower fly I photographed in 2016

It's a new season for photographing insects and other minutia small enough to warrant specialized equipment.  I have my old standard, a Nikon 105 mm lens with three sb200 flashes and a D7200 camera body that will certainly do the trick - it's what I used for the above photo. But, as I have been selling off older stuff, I purchased some new macro gear.

Mirrorless cameras have, to some extent, been overtaking DSLR bodies now for some time.  Every major camera company has developed their own line, Nikon boasting more than a dozen different models as of this date.  I bought a mirrorless Zfc camera last year, a crop-sensor body that I will be using with a macro lens I bought specifically for it.  

My new lens is a Z 105mm macro has features similar to my old 105 but with some noted improvements.  This includes VR, faster internal focusing, and the lens doesn't change size when altering focus.  I do use my macro equipment on manual exposure and focus settings most of the time, so the truth is that these features will not likely make much of a difference.  VR tends to not be much of an issue in close-up photography, so this renders another feature moot.  

The optical performance is a bit better than my old lens, showing improvements in chromatic aberration (purple fringing) and bokeh (out of focus smoothness).  Wide open, the lens shows a significant improvement, but I shoot most of my macro at small apertures in order to get better depth of field.  However, should I do any focus stacking, I am sure the difference will be noticeable.

I also picked up the Godox macro ring flash.  It is different from my sb200 flashes in that it is a single lens-mounted flash and provides 360 degree illumination rather than two or three dispersed areas.  You can see the image below.

I am looking forward to playing with the new equipment.  I will let you know if there is a significant difference between the two systems.  It will be interesting to find out.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com

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