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On the first day of our trip to Ishigaki Island (southern Japan), between our arrival and stopping for the sunset, we drove around on the island a bit. Driving on a pretty rough road that I thought took us to the top of a mountain, it turns out that it eventually just petered out into nothing (where “nothing” is defined as “dense, unpenetrable mountain forest”).
But before retreating all the way, I stopped to take a picture of a huge fern. I should have taken something to show the scale, but the width of the whole thing, seen in the middle picture, was probably about five feet...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 36 mm — 1/125 sec, f/3.2, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — 1/200 sec, f/3.2, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — 1/160 sec, f/3.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
It's hard to get a pretty picture of a fern, but that doesn't stop me from trying.
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Macro time. Time for a Zeiss ZF 100 maybe?
Been thinkin’ about it. Still waiting for that perfect macro (a Nikkor 200mm f/2.8 VR 1:1 Micro, I guess). —Jeffrey
I picked up a 2nd hand Leica 100 f/2.8 APO macro and a Nikon mount adapter from an outfit in Barcelona (leitax.com). Took 10 minutes to swap the mount and it is one one of the most remarkably sharp lenses I have ever shot with. Stop-down metering but works flawlessly on my D700.
If only you had a really wide-angle lens, like the 14-24!
A 200/2.8 VR macro would be incredibly sweet, but it would also be really big, heavy, and expensive.
Even a 180/3.5 VR would be nearly as nice. No one has put out a long image-stabilized macro. The first company to do so is going to get a lot of sales.
Jeffrey- The respected reviewer Björn Rörslett doesn’t speak highly of the construction of the 200mm micro Nikkor AF (see: http://www.naturfotograf.com for the detailed review).
And, it doesn’t have the VR my shaky hands requires, so I remain macroless…. —Jeffrey
If you don’t mind manual focus, Stephen Gandy at Cameraquest in LA still has a few Cosina-Voigtländer 180 f/4’s left. I have one; it’s quite compact and a close-focus lens to boot. I’ve got one and it’s wonderful to travel with.