Help: which macro and telezoom lens to buy

metuljceek10 said:

If you think some other lens is better for what I need, please tell me. And please tell me about your experience with lenses I mentioned above. I'm high school student, so I have to look at the price, too (not more than 900€ for both lenses).

Thank you for your help, I really appreciate it!

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I'm quite new to this so I'm not going to be able to advise you, but I was pointed to a this website http://www.dpreview.com/products/lenses by one of the more established guys on here and it helped me with my choice of camera. Maybe it will help you pick some lenses to.

Fast aperture isn't so important, because at 1:1 scale you'll usually want to shoot with as small an aperture as possible - otherwise you'll only have a tiny slice of the subject in focus. Using a flash becomes quite important.

As an alternative, how about something like the Sigma 150mm macro plus a flash? Or, if the zoom is important, Tamron 70-200 f2.8 plus some extension tubes for macro?

I have the Tamron 90mm f/2.8 and it's a rockstar lens for the money! Only downfall is it doesn't have image stabilisation, so you can't just walk up to something, focus and shoot handheld if you want super sharp pictures! A good tripod and head will go a long way, as will macro tracks/rails.

I have discovered that the 90mm Tamron whilst designed to be focused some 290mm away from things, also has a much closer focal point of about 60mm from the end of the lens that brings things much closer again and still with good focus.

The other thing to think of if you are going to use a macro lens is to work from live view on your camera with it as magnified as you can get to check your manual focus is tickety-boo! Don't bother with autofocus at all.

A macro ring light to place on the end of the lens will help your shots freeze to a certain extent also.

If you get extension tubes, make sure they have the contacts to allow aperture control from your camera. If you check fleabay they can be got for under $50!

Most of all, have fun and enjoy the exploration to this side of photography. There are some amazing resources on the indynet if you look for them. No Cropping Zone is a fave of mine.

Tamron makes some good lenses. I have the 28-75 f /2.8 as the usual lens on my Canon 7d. Top quality if you ask me. For my macro work I like around 100 mm. Mine is the 100 mm f/2.8 L from Canon and you just can't get a sharper lens, at least on a Canon mount. My all time favorite film lens was s 104 mm Nikor 2.8. The 1:1 in those lens specs means that the image the lens will give in the viewfinder is the same size at the object being photographed. You can get really close with a 1:1 lens regardless of the focal length. The longer lens will let you get really close without getting really close, though. Dosen't make sense, but trust me on that.

Tl;dr: Go with the 90mm Tammy.

Dale