Life is there to…

Finally it has arrived! Mijn new macro lens. To be very precise it is the “Nikkor AF-S VR Micro 105mm f/2.8 G IF-ED”, but that is rather a mouth full (and I have no idea if that is a correct English saying at all :P):

For some time I was wondering what kind of lens I would buy first. A wide angle lens? Or a replacement for my old (really old!) 70-300mm zoom lens? A macro lens? Or some other kind of lens?
The solution was simple and came from the side of Marion. With her very straight forward logical she said that out of 10 pictures I make 3 are of people as Sanne of herself, 2 of landscapes and buildings and 5 of plants, flowers, (small) animals and objects. So a macro lens would be most logical.

For which macro lens I listened around. Decided after talking with people once or twice for another lens. And finally I made the decision to go for the Nikkor 105mm.

Some nice features of the lens are “Vibration Reduction” (correction of camera shaking), “Silent Wave Motor” (auto focusing of the lens is very silent), “Nano Crystal Coat” (minimizing ghost and flare effects), “Extra-low dispersion” (reduces chromatic aberration at high magnification)… which sounds all very cool, but basically it all together says that this is very nice lens to have!

This lens gives me a lot to learn and try again. Read up stuff about making macro pictures. Which will be fun and also nice now Marion is away for 3 weeks.
The pictures I am posting with this blog are just simple things I tried with more good luck as knowing. The knowledge will come later.

As said, a very lens to make macro pictures. But wait a minute… someone told me that this lens also very nice to make portraits. Which might be something I will be using this lens also a lot for.

The picture above is taken very closely to a fossil of a fern that I own.

Of course I also bought a protection filter for this lens. Rather damaging by accident the glass of this 30 Euro filter than the glass of this 700+ Euro lens. I simple way to reduce risk I would say. I know that there are also folk who don’t do this, but that is up to them. If I can prevent bad things with 30 Euro then I will.

So what next to buy for my camera? I was thinking of buying a decent flash, but those I see rather often for a very friendly second hand price. So that is something that can wait.
A wide angle lens is something that I would like to have one day, but it will be not something I will be using very much (at least as far I can say now).
I do have a 70-300mm zoom lens, but it is very old one. It has no AF or VR. Although it can focus with the motor in the camera itself, but this is slow. And of course the “glass” of modern lenses is much better than that of my old lens. To that I was happily surprised by the price of a new replacement for my old lens. With in mind that I get some money back from the taxes and that in May there will be holiday money, I think I will go for this. But as they say, nothing so easy to change as the mind of a man :).

Something else that needs to be changed is the bag that I use to carry my camera stuff around. It is simply to small now. I think I will go for one these nice backpacks.

Anyway, I have something to play with while Marion is away :-)