Please don't make things up such as "being too amateur to be taken seriously or worth putting nice glass on." I never wrote that and never meant that. The D5300 being a consumer-grade DSLR is a fact. Sorry Mike, you have no right to misinterpret what I wrote. That's twice you've knocked the D5300 as being too amateur to be taken seriously or worth putting nice glass on. I trust this lens doesn't have a huge amount of focus shift on stop-down! Though this should still be possible even with just the click stops, it's a bit more painful that way. I'm guessing if you have to compose at the shooting aperture, the lens lacks the convenient feature seen on my Hartblei, Peleng and Arsat lenses, all of which lack any communication with the camera: a "set" aperture with click-stops, and a free aperture ring that can toggle between the set aperture and wide open, for focus. Jose: That's an interesting-looking lens, though I'm not sure how useful 2:1 is on a crop sensor (except, maybe, for stud earrings - most jewellery I've seen would take up a reasonable chunk of a 24mm x 16mm DX frame at 1:1 magnification). But I will state again that the older and much more affordable Tamron 90mm macro (without VC) is a bit LoCA-prone for jewellery, so unless the new ones are in budget, I'd be looking more closely at the Tokina 100mm and accept the lack of autofocus/metering - though this is a problem if you're going the helicon focus route and want automated stacking. I'd rather be using a D5x00 series for this than a D7x00, or even D750. I would assume that we are not talking about very demanding product photography for the highest-end jewelers and the budget for equipment is fairly limited.Īctually, the D5x00 series is high on my list of recommendations for macro shooting, because of the flip-out screen (and high pixel density). They seem to be selling rings that are typically several hundred dollars in price Therefore, their target customers seem to be general consumers, and the OP is using a consumer-grade Nikon D5300 with a 35mm/f1.8 DX AF-S lens. Lighting is yet another complex subject that can easily justify its own lengthy thread.īTW, I had a chance to check the OP's web site. Again, the main purpose for the image sample is to demonstrate appropriate lens focus length, not how to lit such subjects. It is diffuse light and not at all dramatic. The lighting in my example is, as far as I am concerned, fairly poor. I should point out that the OP mainly asked about lenses for her jewelry photography, and my example is to demonstrate that, in my opinion, something close to 105mm would be appropriate to photograph rings using a DX body. It looks like B&H has begun to sell the lens. Of course the main benefit of the lens in that it goes to 2X with no extension tubes. I also just bought a 6" adjustable camera platform since shooting from a tripod is a requirement, especially at 2X. There are no electronic connections on the lens so your body has to be instructed to release the shutter when the shutter release is pressed. The digital view finder also helps as would Live View on the D7200. I've mounted a LED ring light on the front since it's best to shoot at F16 and you have to focus at F16, which can be very dark. I just got one from China and am in the process of learning how to use it. On a cropped frame Sony A77 II (or Nikon version), it's a 90 mm lens which reduces the vignetting and gives a little more shooting room. Ĭheck out the Venus 60mm F2.8 2X macro lens. I don't think anything shorter than 85mm would be a good idea unless your jewelry is much larger than a typical ring. Again, there are some good third-party 90mm and 100mm macros. The 105mm I used here is quite close to that. That was why I suggested the Nikon 85mm, which I don't have. There is still plenty of working distance to light your subject.Īlso see the discussion when I reviewed the Nikon 40mm/f2.8 macro lens: įor something that small, you want a longer macro lens to give yourself some working distance. With just one ring or one piece of jewelry, the overall subject size is perhaps smaller than two coins together, but I think 105mm on DX should be a good focal length for this purpose. Similar to the OP, I set up a DX-format D7100 body with the Nikkor 105mm/f2.8 AF-S VR macro lens. The two coins are similar in size and are perhaps a bit larger than the diameter of your typical ring, without any diamond/stone on. Instead of some ring, I used a 50 cent Eruo coin and a US quarter. Here are a couple of images to illustrate a similar set up for macro jewelry photography.
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