Spring time and early summer is such an appealing time in the year to me. In the sad and color less winter I am having sometimes troubles to be inspired to take pictures. It’s not about missing passion but the lack of color and the long dark periods is not helping my motivation to get out into nature and capture images of the season. It’s so much different now, the spring and early summer period where there is fresh green, the blossom of so many kinds of flowers and trees that are catching my attention. It’s nice to image what you can natural see with your both eyes e.g. with my loved always on lens the 7Artisans 35mm f1.4 APSC but very often I want to get the bizarre forms and wonderful colors of our nature much closer. For that cases I love to use macro lenses. Best with an imaging ratio of 1:1. You might ask now “What does this mean?”, this means the size of the object has the same size on the sensor of your camera. An example: If you are imaging a spider that has a length of 1cm the size of the spider reflected via the lens on the camera sensor is also 1cm. That way you capture small things really large and you can see so many nice details you do not see under normal conditions. E.g. you can see that this small spider has a lot of hairs on their legs and 6 eyes.
During my Nikon period I used the AF-S VR Micro Nikkor 105mm f2.8 IF-ED a great lens but big and heavy. Also I was never convinced that AF is useful in Macro Photography. Today, since I am fully addicted to Fujifilm Cameras and in my eyes the Fujifilm X-PRO3 the best camera ever build is, I am using the 7Artisans 60mm f2.8 Macro lens. First the MKI version and today the MKII version of this lens. I made a small comparison of these two lenses. You can find it here.
With the fully manual 7Artisans 60mm f2.6 MKII Macro lens it’s so easy to select the right focus spot on the subject to image. Often I use a tripod to close the shutter to enhance the reach of the field of depth but still keeping the ISO values at three digits and the noise extrem low. Using the fantastic Fujifilm cameras with their extreme low noise sensors I am also not afraid to shoot out of hand using higher ISO values. Please see the examples below ratio 1:1 with f22 at 1/38s and ISO 6400. The noise level is still at a very acceptable level even supports the atmosphere of the image.
I love the color rendering of this 7Artisans lens additional to the high IQ. All this in a compact but very robust metal housing, with inner focusing system which means that during turning the focus ring the lens does not change the length. Just perfect and so much fun to use. In case you got interested in trying Macro photography here is a link to the 7Artisans online shop.
Please leave you thoughts to this topic in a comment.
