Lens comparison for macro work

ken_in_nh wrote:

John K wrote:

RazorSharpWO wrote:

I also agree with John's assessment that light is more important than gear.

This is especially true when you're shooting "a single image" @ f/8-f/16 ... or beyond.

Agreed, but do not discount light quality with respect to stacking. Very easy to lose a lot of detail if the light is not diffused properly, and it will impact a stacked image as much as a single frame.

This is so true, and took me a while to learn by trial and error.

Yesterday, I was looking at some of my earliest close up and macro shots, from 12 or more years ago. Some were with enlarger lenses on all sorts of extension, and some were my first attempts at stacking. My how things have changed. But the changes were a result of practice, learning, better gear, better software and such. I suspect everyone commenting here has had similar experiences.

I certainly have, over a similar period.

Another thought: Comments here are to some degree influenced by equipment and certainly by subject. Gardener's assistant does a lot of stacking, for example, but he has gear that makes it almost trivially easy, and mostly does it only for static subjects.

Correct. Focus stacking is one of the techniques I use for botanical close-ups, but I don't use it for invertebrate close-ups or macros. For some years now I have used separate setups for invertebrates and for botanical subjects. Both subject area setups have changed over time, but at no time have I been able to come up with a single setup to cover both subject areas, and I still can't.

Flowers obviously don't move around in the way that a lot of my invertebrate subjects do, but from the camera's perspective they can move a surprising amount and still have focus stacking succeed. I live in a breezy area and so the plants are more often than not moving around the the breeze. Also, I work hand-held and I don't have steady hands, so the whole frame moves around from hand shake over the course of sometimes several seconds of exposure. To an extent that surprises me, the stacking software can deal with both sorts of movement.

My botanical imaging is much affected by equipment in two ways. First, as you rightly say, by providing front to back of scene focus-racked video my Panasonic setup trivialises the capture of natural light botanical material for external focus stacking (its internal stacking is too flaky for my purposes). But second, it provides aperture bracketing. which trivialises the task of selecting the best aperture to use for a particular scene when I'm shooting stills. I typically use both techniques in a session (and never use pure single-captures, at least not with my "flower setup" - I do use pure single-capture with other setups that I use from time to time.) My "flower setup" lets me switch back and forth at will between video racking for stacking and aperture bracketing for stills. I don't know of equipment from any other manufacturer which would let me do this.

John K's favorite equipment makes stacking very difficult AND he shoots quickly moving subjects, so he needs high F stops for good DOF, and handholds, so he uses flash to avoid having to use excessively long shutter speeds or high ISO and avoid camera shake (sorry about the over-simplification, John).

Same here for invertebrates.

And that led to his interest in light quality, with lessons for even us non-flash users.

The OP seems to want a dual use lens. (s)he might consider, as others have suggested, just starting with a regular lens and compound close up lenses like the Raynoxes. I started playing with them last year and was surprised at the quality and ease of use.

I've had (positively) surprised reactions to images, especially invertebrate images, captured with close-up lenses on non-macro telezoom lenses. I've also had surprised reactions (to the point sometimes of near incredulity) to images captured using close-up lenses on small sensor bridge cameras, here too especially invertebrate images.

Depending on what one wants to achieve, specialised and sometimes high end equipment may be needed, but I think there is a very large overlap between such equipment and more modest equipment as to what they can achieve, especially when modern software is added into the mix.