----- Original Message ----- From: "Christian" Subject: Re: Macro Lenses
> FF wrote: >> they dont allow "better control of the background" >> when you WANT some more background do they? Thats >> what shorter lenses are for in a lot of cases. > > Of course, I agree with that. I use wide angles a lot for flower macros. > >> It is not always desired to have the extreme telephoto >> effect. And even with the shorter lenses (50mm is NOT >> short in macro range on APS anyway) > > I have a 500mm and use a 300mm for butterfly closeups. 50mm is short. :-) > I impression from the original post was that the person was looking more for an inexpensive general purpose macro than anything else. My experience to date is that the 50mm focal length isn't really long enough to be considered a general purpose focal length for macro, even with the shorter focal lengths used on our DSLR cameras. Hence my recomendation for something in the 90-100mm range. Overall, it will be more useful more often than a 50mm focal length, judging from my experience so far. With most of the macro work I have done, it has been desirable to limit the amount of background to avoid distractions, most of the time, I have wanted the longer FL to do this, and even when a shorter lens would have been ideal, I've been able to make the longer lens work. More often, the longer FL will provide more use than the shorter one. A normal 50mm lens (either a 1.4 or 1.7) with extension tubes is also a good option, as I mentioned earlier, since it gives a good fast, short telephoto for portaiture or when a little more reach is wanted, with the ability to do close up work if the 90-100mm lens is too long. What this gives the photographer is an excellent general purpose telephoto with a somewhat compromised but still very useful macro lens. I've done quite a bit of close up work this way (standard FL on extension tubes), and have never had a problem with sharpness or linear distortion issues, providing the lens isn't showing these problems under normal circumstances. William Robb -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
