Cheap Macro for Nikon

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I was planning on hiring a Macro for some baby shots of our newborn.

It did get me thinking is there a cheap Macro I could buy? It's £50 to hire one for a couple of days. Is there anything I could purchase to go with a D90?
 
Riz said:
I was planning on hiring a Macro for some baby shots of our newborn.

It did get me thinking is there a cheap Macro I could buy? It's £50 to hire one for a couple of days. Is there anything I could purchase to go with a D90?
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You could probably get an older Sigma 105mm macro or Tamron 90mm macro for under £200 but I doubt you'd find much for £50 tbh. Maybe there's a less well known manual macro lens out there that's cheap but I'm not aware of one.
 
Going back some years I had good results with a Cosina 100mm AF Macro, not the strongest construction, but the results from it were sharp. Certainly be fine for occasional use.

They must be pennies on the S/H market by now.
 
Get yourself a reversing ring, probably the cheapest route into macro and surprisingly effective.
 
I bought a Micro-Nikkor 55 3.5 for about £65, so it is possible to get close to your budget. It's a very sharp lens. There are some proviso's though - you'd have to make sure you got an AI version of the lens, and it wouldn't meter on your D90 so you'd have to trial and error the correct exposure, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem as your subject won't be moving too much :)
 
"Macro for some baby shots of our newborn"?????

a macro lens is designed for taking images of very small subjects at very close distances - it can focus closer than a normal lens ........ and DOF is important in macro shots

OK the 100mm, 85mm, 105mm are good for portraits .........

a normal cheap Nikon "kit lens" zoom, (they are very good quality) will, IMHO serve you better for "baby" shots
 
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How about a set of close up lens filters? Circa £15 on Amazon depending on the filter size.
 
adrianday said:
It might be a very small baby. ;)
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You can buy a used DX Nikon 18 -105mm for very little money - how near does the OP want to get to the baby - is the OP wanting to take 1:1 shots of the babies eyes etc., etc.

I tend to stay a safe distance from them
 
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Sigma F2.8 50mm EX DG Macro

I've had one for well over 10 years. It's insanely sharp - nigh on as good as the F1.4 ART lenses I've tried on FF.

Around 100 quid secondhand. General IQ knocks my similarly priced Nikkors for 6. You'd have to spend lot on a Nikkor to rival the Sigma. Only downside is its propensity to hunt for focus (unlike the ART lenses, which seem to AF quicker than many native lenses).

If you can live with occasional hunting the Sigma is a steal. For static objects, manually focussed, it wil fool anyone into thinking you have a lens many times the price.

nb - written whilst being assaulted by toddler. excuse typos
 
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