07.23
Since getting a 105mm Micro lens (its real name is AF-S VR Micro-NIKKOR 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED but yeesh…) I’ve been experimenting a lot with macro photography or in other words shooting reeally, reeally small things up close. Since, I’ve never owned a macro lens before, it’s been kindof a learning experience.
The first thing you figure out when working up real close is that as far as focus goes, there’s little room for slop. Tilt your head a little bit and the image is out of focus. No, not “a little soft” but blown-out blurry.
Of course there’s auto-focus, but when shooting macro it’s not always a big help. Generally auto-focus works pretty poorly up close, it simply pushes the limits of the technology. You can hear the motor frantically trying to move the lens back and forth that 1/16th of an inch you need to get that bug or whatever in focus (usually while you’re holding your breath and trying not to wiggle the camera, which when you do throws the auto-focus off even more).
Now if it’s dark, or you’re sporting an astigmatism in your shooting eye like me, we’ll then sometimes you might have to punt and just use AF. But be warned, if you use auto-focus for macro work it has to be dead on accurate. I used the wicked cool “AF Fine Tune” feature of my D300 to kick the focus of my 105mm macro lens back just a bit (+8 if you care). It’s not that the lens isn’t sharp, it’s just that “a wee bit” is the difference between a bug’s eye being tack sharp and nothin’ but blur.
My favorite subject at the moment is bugs and other creepy-crawlies, probably because they look so creepy up close 
and given the semi-rural area where I live, there’s a healthy pool to choose from.
Bugs however tend to move around a lot, and often times pretty dang quickly, so they offer additional challenges. I try to use small apertures to squeeze out the most depth-of-field that I can, in case the little buggers move. f/22 gives a little bit of leeway but the downside is that sometimes a little bokeh is worth having. f/5.6 on the other hand is pushing it. That wide and you can have a spider’s eye sharp but the rest of it too blurred to be recognizable.
I’ve found having a strobe handy is a huge help. Even a small strobe can easily throw enough light for f/22 at close range and have enough left to cycle quickly. I tend to pop my SB-800 on the camera, sometimes with the diffuser, and let the iTTL mode do the right thing, usually matching whatever f-stop I choose. Other times I just use it for fill.
It’s a lot of fun, and along the way I’m picking up a lot about the various critters we share this part of the world with. Did you know there are tarantulas in California?
Of course you don’t need a marco lens for those.
