This lens is a challenging beastie, macro lenses at close focus will challenge your ability to hold your camera steady, when your depth of field is measured in tenths of inches there is little room for error. That is one thing that has challenged me so far when shooting handheld. The other difficulty is related to that, to get a larger depth of field, you need to stop down, well even in broad daylight stopping down to f16 with a 100mm lens requires higher ISO's or a tripod.
Anyway, I took the opportunity on Sunday to get out my softbox and tripod and see what this lens can really do.
First: My favorite flower along with Daisies, The Sunflower. While not at 1:1 magnification this type of shot is something that a Macro should excel at. I was not disappointed.
Moving in closer, makes things more tricky. Both exposure (increased to get detail in the middle of the flower blowing the petals) and point of focus have to be carefully set, often by positioning the camera and moving the subject.
Turning the flower and a larger aperture allow for isolation of certain parts of the flower. While not the best shot, it allowed me to see the effect of what I was doing.
Abandoning the flower, I photographed a treasured piece of Caithness Glass, I love this stuff, and it was fun to make a beautiful photo with it.
Getting closer is always a temptation.
Then getting a little more out there I put some water droplets on a CD and played with my LED Maglight. Liked the effect, but not as much as I had thought.
I learned a lot about my lens which will help me when I get to a more critical point when I need to get the shot and I need to absolutely trust the lens will do what I expect. So far I am really confident that this lens will deliver.
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