Hah, yea, I'm not so much scared of critters (outside of dinner plate sized spiders) as wondering how close you can get to most critters before they buzz off. Butterflies seem on the skittish side. Bees and wasps maybe not so much?
… to be honest the biggest problem is finding them, and having a camera when you do. Location helps. Time of day is also important as they can be sluggish early in the morning, or dusk. I don’t have the ability to go out and hunt so I take what comes my way. That tends to be smaller things. Dead things can be interesting too as I found out last year, they can be staged / posed and give good results
Like birds even a long lens isn’t usually long enough for butterflies or dragon/damselflies, but the dedicated can get those shots, and we all get lucky at times
Good luck with the 100. Don’t despair if your first ones don’t work, try and try again, and post some shots here 👍
I discovered very fast that the macro zoom I had many decades ago is still unsurpassed, but I have it no more.
Your subject it has to be in focus, yes, but it's hard at the focus distance that it will perfectly fit the frame... unless you want to edit.
I bought a Z 18-140 that with the Meike rings gives me some room for composing.
My subjects are plants, from a diameter of 0,5cm up to 25cm and I shoot from 8 to 24cm with the Z 16-50 and the 18-140.
Using the fx 70-300 the nearest is 40cm.
I don't really see how I can obtain the eyes of a bug. (!)
Some pictures that may be helps you....
This is the best I can do on a 0,5cm subject using the kit Z 16-50
And this picture was taken during that very shot.
That's with the Z 18-140
With the 70-300 (105-450)
I'm really interested to get a dedicated macro lens F mount, so I follow you and your finding !!
It depends. I use a Canon FD 100-300 F/5.6L lens with a Raynox DCR-250 attached. That gets me to a 4:1 at a lens to subject distance of around 150mm, depending on the format I use. I prefer a zoom for that range because it's more versatile in the ratio you might want or need. The 300mm end is the higher ratio and gives the best lens to subject distance. To be honest, I gave up on fixed focal length macro lenses years ago. DOF is the hardest to deal with, so I set F/32 because my subjects all breath and move. Generally with a Sunpak DX-8R ring flash.
-on the last picture.
On the left is a magnifying lens with a modified leds Ring lamp 24W
-on the next to the last pic.
These are the lamps I use for my Carnivorous plants > 6000K
It's a 4wings Sansi growing lamp 65W. I've modified the wings to have a 180° vertical rotation
Not visible there is also a Sansi Bulb 35W
The folding wings lamp light is impressive 18.000Lux at 50cm
I post you the link to the specific lights catalog
- they ship worldwide and you receive it in 3-5 days:
At 4 ft, I expect the rf 100-400mmAt 4 ft, I expect the rf 100-400mm@400mm to give a larger image than any lens with a shorter FL. Probably 4x that of the 100mm lens. At that distance, you are not in macro territory.
It's not quite as simple as longer focal length is best, my 150-500 can't focus as close as 4' unless I add extension tubes or diopters. One of my 500mm mirror lenses will focus down to 186cm which is only a little more than 4ft, the 600mm & 1000mm have MFDs a bit longer but still might give bigger images (if you can get them focused in time!).
True macro lenses have two factors that make them special, an ability to focus closer than normal & a flat plane of focus at short distances. They do not give bigger images than other lenses of the same focal length except for when the closer focusing allows this. So the longest lens that will focus down to 4ft will give the greatest magnification.
Long focal length 'macro' zooms are probably the best option for this style of shooting.
Thanks for the reply. I'm starting to get my head around what a dedicated macro lens is and is not. It is also taking me a while to properly express what I am looking for.
I am looking for a lens more for close ups of small critters in their environment, which is why I put close ups in my thread title. I've been using the pl 100-400 (it's what I had) and in some instances, at a 5 foot minimum focus distance and .22x magnification, that worked, but often the min focus distance was just to long. Sometimes I also wanted greater magnification.
On my balcony I often have 2 feet or less of working distance, so I need a lens that fit that environment.
So, I think what I am looking for is a lens where I can work with its max magnification out to about .2x at 'reasonable' working distances. You would think (I certainly did) that manufacturers would put out a chart that gives you some idea of working distances and magnification rates. That appears not to be the case.
Simply adding extension tubes of a diopter (close up 'filter') to your existing lens will change it's focusing range. In both cases the maximum focus distance will reduce as well as the minimum, and tubes can be awkward with zooms as any adjustment of focal length will change the focus distance.
Cheap diopters are often poor quality but achromatic ones are generally excellent. Even the cheapest tubes will give you good image quality, but cheap ones may not have the wiring/linkages to allow camera-lens communication...
I found a site with a working distance calculator for Raynox diopters. For the RF 100-500 I would have a min to max focus range of around 1.5". That seems rather restrictive for photographing bugs that move around rather quickly.
Tubes are every bit as restrictive on short focal length lenses, but have much less effect on long lenses.
Using a short tube on a 200 or 300mm lens still allows focus to a fair distance (for bugs, not landscapes or portraits)
The raynox DCR250 is probably the one you calculated at +8 diopter it can't focus past 12.5cm so is very restrictive.
I prefer the DRC150 which is +4.8 diopter. with it fitted I can focus to 20cm which is far more usable.
Weaker +1 diopter lenses are also available which would allow focus to 1m
In each case the nearest available focus will be dependant on the lens your using (specifically it's minimum focus distance).
Trying a +10 lens on my 150-500 which has a MFD right out at 5m, gives practically no room for subject movement - around 12.5mm or 1/2" between near & far.
The best site I've found for looking at macro options is www.extreme-macro.co.uk I think it covers all the options & had calculators available too.
The Raynox DCR-250 on a Canon FD 100-300. Dead subjects simply don't appeal, if it's not breathing, I'm not interested.
So we are looking at a lens to subject distance of 150mm to 180mm depending on the zoom set. Prefer a zoom for the versatility of the macro ratio. DOF at F/32 is still really slim, so you need to be deadly accurate in focus for sure. I find manual focus is the way to go at higher ratios. With that setup, up to a 4:1 is possible.
Of course it also depends on what format you choose. Red admiral butterfly and a fly
There's not many that want that though and to be honest, I far prefer to see the entire subject, not just part of it. To each their own I guess. Don that's in the forum somewhere here takes amazing high ratio macro shots, but he's also very clever about it.
