Hello,
Right now, I’m considering getting a macro (micro) lens for my Nikon D5600, likely the cheapest one, Nikkor 55/2.8 (hopefully around $60 if used), because I’ve been having difficulty taking pictures of smaller, obol-sized coins.
So, the question is, should I? I don’t really know much about photography so I have no idea if getting a macro lens will really solve the problem, and if 55/2.8 is a good choice or not. I take pictures of small animals like insects or fish sometimes, so I have a feeling it may come in handy, I’m just not sure. Can anyone help me out?
Quote: "Cuthwellis"Hmmm...I guess I might get a macro lens, after all, just not sure if the 55/2.8 is the right one. And—how could I forget until now?—a tripod!
If you go too much lower than 55mm, you start getting into the fish eye lens. An f2.8 lens should do ok, light can be adjusted ..
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1. Tripod.
2. Lightbox. (cheap one can be found or some DIY lighting to diffuse the light.)
3. Remote for camera. (can be wired or wireless.)
Its been a long time since I went out for a landscape photo shoot.
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What's best to use depends on the budget and possibly what you already have camera wise. For a full frame sensor, you are best off using a 100mm ish macro lens and a crop frame sensor a 50mm ish macro lens. With the 50s you will find a 50mm is a lot more affordable than say a 55 or 58mm lens. This is because the focal length of 50mm always makes for a slightly inferior lens but if budget is important you can get some great bargains of a 50mm lens and your images won't suffer.
As mentioned above don't go below 50mm as this will noticeably distort your images. you don't need to worry about the f stop fast lenses are pointless for macro photography. You want to use the highest f stop you can get away with and compensate with slow shutter speed, powerful light, and high iso. This will give you a great depth of field allowing the whole of the coin to be in focus. You will need to experiment to find the best results for your equipment, trust me when I say this can be time-consuming.
You won't need autofocus which on macro lenses can be pretty poor anyway. I use mirrorless cameras which have focus peaking which is very handy for manual focusing on my bench. The beauty of mirrorless cameras is that you can attach pretty much any old lens to your camera with a cheap adapter. My current set up for coin photography is a Sony a7 with a Minolta 100mm macro lens it works beautifully. This is still an expensive setup the camera secondhand cost me almost £500 and the lens cost me £80 also secondhand.
If you are starting out I would recommend a crop frame mirrorless camera which can be obtained for less than £200 secondhand (possibly less than £100), get the best quality you can afford, ideally one which works well at high iso. And a secondhand manual 50mm ish macro lens. You could also acquire a good quality budget 50mm ish lens and a lens reverser which will convert your lens into a macro. I use an old Soligor one with my Minolta 58mm lens and it works beautifully but it is a bit tricky to get used to. Another option is to make a macro lens by modifying a standard lens. There are some great tutorials on this on youtube using old helios 44 lenses.
Thank you for the advice, everyone! I guess I’ll get a cheap used 55mm/f2.8 after all and see if I can do without autofocus, then...I just hope it works, haha.
Quote: "Cuthwellis"Thank you for the advice, everyone! I guess I’ll get a cheap used 55mm/f2.8 after all and see if I can do without autofocus, then...I just hope it works, haha.
I never use autofocus for coin shots. Over at the CCF coin photography subforum, they recommend tethered shooting focusing manually, using magnified live-view on the PC screen.
BTW, back in the days of film, I used the 55mm/2.8 AIS Micro-Nikkor for coin photos.
