D800 for macro with a $100.00 lens...

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Stany Buyle
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D800 for macro with a $100.00 lens...

Post by Stany Buyle »

I am very excited while until now I was reading several times that D800 requires the best glass because of the pixel density, but today's experience proved me the opposite.... D800 is very forgiving for inferior glass because of it's resolution.
Don't get me wrong, of course the best glass will help to provide the ultimate IQ, but you don't need absolutely expensive lenses to get amazing detail with D800.

Today there came two minutes of sunshine :D and some early spring insects showed up.
Just for test purpose to know how D800 performs with lower grade glass I mounted my screw driven 28-105 F3.5-4.5 and switched to macro mode.

Two things that astonished me in this test:
  • The easyness D800 autofocuses an old screw driven lens in C, while doing macro and handholding... (see last picture)
  • The unexpected detail you get out of a scene due to the D800' resolution...
The pictures...

The scene:
This image was taken handheld, at iso 800, 1/640 sec and F11.
Image

The image has been slightly sharpened in PP in Capture NX2.

A 75% crop resized to 1024px longest side to fit on this forum:
Image

And a "real " 100% crop...
Image

And one more...
The scene:
This image was taken handheld, at iso 800, 1/800 sec and F11.
Image

and a 67% crop in original crop size:
Image

(*)Related to the astonishing easyness D800 snaps focus on a small moving subject with a screw-driven lens while shooting handheld, a sample:

:!: The underneath picture has motion blur because of too low shutter speed fro such an image.

The image was taken at iso 100, 1/100 sec, F9
Image

And a 67% crop of the image resized to 1024px longest side to fit on this forum
Image

Thanks for your attention and kindest regards,
Stany
sandor
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Re: D800 for macro with a $100.00 lens...

Post by sandor »

Stany, you did use a very fast shutter speed for the non-moving bee. The second one was even faster. Any reason for that? What would it have been like at slower shutter speeds ? What was the focal length, particularly in shot number 3 ?
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Re: D800 for macro with a $100.00 lens...

Post by Stany Buyle »

sandor wrote:Stany, you did use a very fast shutter speed for the non-moving bee. The second one was even faster. Any reason for that? What would it have been like at slower shutter speeds ? What was the focal length, particularly in shot number 3 ?
Hi Sandor,
I used a fast shutter speed in pic 1 & 2 to avoid motion blur while shooting handhold in a non-comfortable position, up to that I was using a not fast focusing lens which isn't stabilised neither. Focal length in shot 3 was 105mm (micro mode on the 28-105) but as I wrote shutter speed for a bee in flight should be much faster to capture detail...
Have a nice weekend!
Stany
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