I finally decided to break down and buy a Macro lens. I’ve been wanting one for a while, but they can be expensive for a professional one. It went on sale, so I decided it was time to buy the Tamron 90mm f/2.8 1:1 Macro lens with VC for my Nikon camera. After playing with it for a while, I’m kicking myself for not buying one earlier.

I took it out into the garden looking for bugs and flowers. Unfortunately, it’s early October and there’s not much of either around (except for gnats). But I did find a few and was blown away by the results. But I quickly learned that the Depth of Field when you’re that close is unbelievably tiny. You need to be shooting f/16 or higher to get more than an inch in most cases. That requires a lot of light, a really slow shutter speed, high ISO, or a combination of all of the above.

So I brought it inside and set up a quick shoot with some glass covered with Rain-X, a spray bottle, the new Macro lens, and a flash (set to manual). I got this shot by resting the glass on some 2x4’s to lift it up and then put a Target bag underneath for some color and texture (I also tried a number of other objects, but this was my favorite). This shot was done at f/22, 1/25sec, and ISO 200 (I can’t remember the flash power, but I played quite a bit with that).

I then pulled everything into Lightroom 5.2 and dropped the Exposure by about ½ stop. On other shots, I changed the Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks, Vibrance and/or Saturations. I could completely change the feel of a single picture by sliding the bars from one to the other and make it a whole different picture.

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