I hope to very soon now actually get my DSLR at last, not sure which it'll be yet, the new Fuji S3 pro or the old S2 pro.
I will then be looking at buying a macro lens for Butterflies, Dragonflies and Damselflies.
It seems a couple of highly recommended lenses (at a reasonable price !!!) are the Tamron 90mm and the Sigma 105mm. Does anyone have any experience of either of these lenses and if so what are the pros' and con's.
Obviously with the Digital multiplying factor they will be approx 135mm and 160mm, will this be to my advantage ?
What will be the effect to the close focussing distance ?
There are other longer focal length macro lenses available, I think Tamron have a 180mm one, would these be too large on a DSLR ?
Many thanks to any responses.
[QUOTE=tufty]I hope to very soon now actually get my DSLR at last, not sure which it'll be yet, the new Fuji S3 pro or the old S2 pro.
I will then be looking at buying a macro lens for Butterflies, Dragonflies and Damselflies.
It seems a couple of highly recommended lenses (at a reasonable price !!!) are the Tamron 90mm and the Sigma 105mm. Does anyone have any experience of either of these lenses and if so what are the pros' and con's.
Obviously with the Digital multiplying factor they will be approx 135mm and 160mm, will this be to my advantage ?
What will be the effect to the close focussing distance ?
There are other longer focal length macro lenses available, I think Tamron have a 180mm one, would these be too large on a DSLR ?
Many thanks to any responses.[/QUOTE]
I shoot a Nikon D100 and F100 (35mm) with a 105mm Nikkor Micro AF lens - superb results. The multiplying factor with the D100 is about x1.4. This does not seem to be much of a problem and I can switch easily over to the F100 if I cannot get what I want. I would recommend you try the lenses you are looking at with manual focus as well as auto - I do find myself using my cameras in manual focus mode quite a lot in doing close up work.
There are typically 60, 85, 105, 200 and even a 70-180 zoom available for close up stuff - I chose 105mm f2.8 as it provided a good balance of depth of field, close focus, mignifaction and particulary speed when needed. The longer the focal length you go to the more difficult you may find effective use of the lens - the 90 and 105 would be fine - have fun and good luck!
The Tamron and Sigma macro lenses both are very well-liked by photographers. One bit of information that might be relevant to you is that Tamron has just announced a digital version of its 90mm. macro lens. I don't know the technical details, but it's supposedly optimized for digital format, etc. It probably won't be available for a while, but you might watch for it.