As mentioned earlier, my first attempts at macro photography were
sometime around 1956 when armed with a Kodak Retina 2a and a
close-up lens I began to take some macro shots. They were not
too successful but I was only fourteen years old. In recent years I
have spent a lot of time doing close-up and macro nature
photography. In my search for the right lenses I have tried a good
number of them. Here is what I value most in a lens for near focus:Sharpness
Of course I want it sharp but the more I work the less I am
concerned about ‘absolute’ sharpness. There are a lot of very fine
sharp lenses available in the Nikon mount or that can be converted
to that mount. Most of the lens mentioned in this article are sharp or
“sharp enough” for good macro work. Sharpness is not the only
consideration. A lens can be very sharp but difficult to use for other
reasons, like it is too sensitive to light or the widest aperture does
make give enough light in the viewfinder, etc.
Fast Lens
I value a fast lens (one with very small f-stop numbers like f/1.4,
f/2.8, etc.) not because I shoot wide open but because I need to
have maximum light in my viewfinder for focusing well. Since I
often am photographing around dawn or when the light is still
fairly dim (but nice) I need to see what I am doing. The bright
light of full sun is not what I am looking for.
Also I do a lot of focus stacking and I need to see what to focus on
at each step. I don’t entirely agree with those who say that to focus
stack you need to just get to the front of the subject and then
automatically click on through and not focus on anything in
particular but just make sure to have regular intervals.
Of course I understand what they are pointing at but in my
experience this is not enough. For example round, spherical
objects in the frame do not stack well. Your increments have to be
much finer (shorter) than otherwise if your subject is round. In fact
in many subjects there are key points that you don’t want to just
auto-increment past but very carefully be sure to get them in
extreme focus. In other words: if I am blindly incrementing along
with a stack and reach a key point I do finer increments before, at,
and after that point to make sure that that area is in prime focus.