Which Nikon lens to get for macro photography of flowers?

[juan_de_valdenebro]

Hello Tenna, I work in fashion and product in Spain, and sometimes I do macro too, I like a lot flowers and color. I own the Nikon Micro60 since 1997. I have a dozen of Nikons, from fisheye16 to 300, prime and zoom lenses, apart from Rodenstock and Zeiss ones for large and medium formats.

 

The 60mm is the best Nikon I have used in my life if we talk about image quality. Surprisingly sharp and, more important, clean, rich, clear colors, full of contrast, really looks more like a Zeiss lens. Great performance, both with Velvia slide film or b&w, and with digital cameras; an investment for life, very well constructed too: mine has seen many seas and countries and works perfectly.

 

In fact it's the lens I use these days for portraits with my digital camera, where it becomes a confortable 90mm with very little depth of field...

 

The other lens I use for my digital is a 35mm ZF Zeiss, that works as a normal lens. For wide yet I prefer Hasselblad.

 

If you haven't bought the D40, don't do it, you'd want to change it too soon, because of some camera limits and because of its sensor, not able to take everything a great lens can offer. If you bought it, don't worry, anyway you'll find for yourself that your images won't go beyond that sensor's look, and you will need a better sensor, so you'll probably sell the camera before christmas...

 

You are talking about two different concepts: buying a lens that is among the best in the world, and buying a camera that is one of the cheapest in the market.

 

If you get a good camera (excellent sensor) you'll get all your lens can give you. If you get a bad camera (normal sensor) you'll be throwing away lenses & camera money, without getting one top quality image. Even if you are a good photographer. Don't add limits to yourself...

 

In my case, as I don't work in sports photography (I never trigger five times in the same second!), I can use a camera -designed by Fujifilm for Nikon lenses- that takes special care for the image, making digital images have a more natural, film look. This camera is highly recommended for people and flowers photography.

 

The camera price (without lens) was 2,500 and a couple of years ago its sensor won the award for best DSLR sensor of the year. This sensor is completely different from any other camera's sensor: half of its 12,3 effective megapixels sense high lights only, beyond any other camera available from Nikon, and produces the smoothest skins and tonal range I have seen in digital. Now that it's possible to buy it for half the price or less, I'll buy anther S3 as a second body, because I definitely like it better than the new S5. (battery, size, grip, memory cards...)

 

I have used the digital Hasselblad too (I don't own it) and I can tell you that my S3 with the zeiss35, give me 70Mb 16Bit TIFFs from Raw files that make me feel like in medium format... Amazing sharpness and color, great for working in Photoshop, far away from 35mm previous photography. The Fuji S3 is also -and by far- the best high ISO performer DSLR available in the market.

 

If you have any question, my email is juanebro@yahoo.es

Or through my page, www.artimag.eu

 

Every flower is better than any camera