Nikon 105mm VR Macro lens

**rocket scientist** · 3rd May 2015, 06:13 PM

Great work!

I am suitably jealous.

Pete

**dullbird** · 3rd May 2015, 08:09 PM

Originally Posted by austastar

Hi,
Forget about focusing for macro. Preset your focus at the scale you want, and follow your subject by moving the camera. At macro distances, lens extention with focussing affects the subject to lens distace.
Cheers

I really wish I knew what you wrote up there

However when I say manual focus what I mean is I wasnt on Autofocus...I was moving my camera backwards and forwards to get focus..

It was however very hard with the breeze on the day. because even when they landed long enough I would instantly lose the focus dot with the breeze. I thinking you cant accommodate the breeze with moving the camera or at least I couldn't. I sat for about an hour looking at one flower head knowning they would return to it but it was still a game of luck.

All the photos above are all cropped but I think thats fairly obvious to all your pros out there

**Chucaro** · 4th May 2015, 08:36 AM

What it is the DOF on that lens?
To use your technique moving the camera back and forward to get focus using my lens with the diopter I have to have the camera on a tripod on two legs.
The DOF with the diopter is about 20mm

This image with a detail of a grevillea flower gives an idea what it is the DOF with the diopter

**dullbird** · 4th May 2015, 05:24 PM

What do you mean chucaro

What dof was i using at the time?

**Chucaro** · 4th May 2015, 05:32 PM

What I mean is the depth between the fore ground in focus and the back ground out of focus.
In the details of the grevillea flower there is only 20 mm space between the two.
This makes very hard to get a sharp image and a lottery to get it hand held .

**dullbird** · 4th May 2015, 07:52 PM

Oh well its hard to say really because the flower head of the weed was poking out from a gated area in my paddock. so I guess it was probably 8-10" between the flower head and the next closes large object maybe

**Chucaro** · 4th May 2015, 08:35 PM

Looking at this sample image from macro Photo Gallery by Huib Tom at pbase.com looks like that the DOF in the NIKON 105 has more range the 70-300VR with a diopter.
It would be interesting what it is your impression taking close up shots.

**dullbird** · 4th May 2015, 09:08 PM

I find it bloody hard but I'm a novice

I also find unless you have it in the really high numbers its hard to get a lot in focus...because the rest of it blurs out pretty quick

**austastar** · 17th May 2015, 05:17 PM

Hi,
The high numbers you speak of are the f stops, which is a fraction. i.e. at f16 the area (mm^2) of the hole in your lens apature is 1/16 of the focal length of your lens in mm.
It does get tricky with a macro lens (or any lens on extension tubes or bellows) because as you focus out towards 1:1 (same image size as object) your focal length has actually doubled and your fstop value has actually halved and halved again. (The inverse square law).

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law

The smaller the hole the less light, but, also the narrower the angle of the rays entering the lens and as they meet at a narrower angle, the point of focus is not as critically defined as rays (or lines) that cross at a larger angle. This gives you a greater depth of field.

So it is a matter of finding which numbers suit what you want to do.

Any moving object up close is difficult. I used flash to solve the problem of camera shake and movement when I was working.
You can light with flash subtly by bouncing the flash, and Nikon will use TTL metering to balance the light so it does not dominate. Fill flash can also be easily used with a digital camera as you can see the effects immediatly. You can even do it with a 'dumb' flash (no metering at all) just by altering flash to object distance/direction or masking it with white cloth or tissue paper.

The idea is to under expose the shot with the time/apature by about half a stop and have the flash at about correct exposure. This will allow the 1000th second of flash to freeze the image movement without dominating the lighting.
Vary the lighting strengths to see what different effects it will give you.
Play with it, you won't break anything.
Cheers

Thread: Nikon 105mm VR Macro lens

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