Daisy Flowers

These daisy flowers have been taken with a macro lens to enable me to get close enough to fill the frame.

To get good composition in your images it is good to get in close and fill the frame.

There are many different macro lenses available and some of them for Canon and Nikon cameras are summarised here on this site.

Generally macro lenses range in focal length from around 40mm and go up to 200mm. The longer lenses being useful for critters which may be easily frightened.

A 200mm lens was used for the capture. To capture birds generally a reasonably long lens is required such as a 200-300mm.

There are many choices in telephoto lenses and it is a compromise of cost versus quality.

Quality is determined to some extent by cost, generally the higher the cost the better the lens quality, and cost  is also determined by lens length, aperture etc.

There are some summaries and some reviews of both Canon and Nikon cameras and lenses here.

Eastern Water Dragon

These Eastern Water Dragons are an excellent photographic subject, as you can approach quite close to them. For this image I used a Nikon D700 camera and a Nikon 300mm f/3 lens. Nature photography is one aspect of photography which requires quite a lot of patience to attempt to capture excellent images, quite different to people photography where the subject can be instructed to achieve the desired result.

Orchid

This orchid image gas been captured with a Nikon D2H camera and 105mm Micro lens. A Micro or Macro lens such as this is very good for close up images of subjects such as flowers. It gives sufficient working distance and a good angle of view. For other subjects such as insects etc. a slightly longer lens of around 200mm would be better to get a longer distance between the subject and camera.

See some of the camera reviews and detailed lens reviews at the following articles.

Cormorant

This cormorant has been captured with a Nikon D700 camera and 300mm lens. The image has been converted to monochrome in Photoshop. Long lenses are required when approaching birds and you need to be careful not to disturb the bird. Some examples of the lenses required are discussed in the following links.

It does not really matter what brand of camera you are using as they are pretty much the same when comparing cameras at similar price points, but the lens is very important. Use a lens with as low an aperture as you can afford.

Dove

A Dove at our bird feeder. Captured with a Nikon D700 and 300mm telephoto lens.

http://www.alldigi.com/

This image has been captured with the Nikon 105mm lens, there is a nice review here Nikon, Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED AF-S VR Micro Lens Review of this lens. It is an excellent general purpose lens as well as a very sharp macro lens.

For image such as this a long lens is essential, also excellent long lens technique is required, preferably with a monopod or Tripod.

There are many long lenses in the Nikon range suitable for this type of image. The lenses generally range from 300mm to 600mm with the longer ones being very expensive.

The range of lenses available in the Nikon range is listed in these Nikon lens reviews with links to detailed information and reviews on each lens.

For many birds, lenses in the range 300mm to 600mm are generally required.

When using long lenses it is good to use some means of long lens support, such as a tripod or monopod. Also in the Nikon lens range there are now manylenses with built in VR which can be a great advantage in stabilising the camera and getting a sharper image.

At flower festivals I generally use a Macro lens or a medium range zoom.

As I use Nikon Equipment I would use one of the following Macro lenses for flowers:

• Nikon, Nikkor 60mm f/2.8G ED AF-S Micro Lens
• Nikon, Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G IF ED VR AF-S Micro Lens Review

However, if I wanted to try a good zoom then one of the following would produce excellent results:

• Nikon, Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S Lens
• Nikon Nikkor 24-120mm f/4.0G ED VR Lens
• Nikon, Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II Lens

The zooms are very flexible and allow a range of images from the flower beds, to closer up images, however the Micro lenses allow you get get extreme close up images.