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Hey Photographers! Today, we’re continuing our “Camera Bag Essentials” Blog Series, focused on helping newer photographers develop their arsenal of professional photography gear. Our hope is that you never spend a dollar on camera gear that won’t reflect a direct return on your investment, and we’re here to help you invest your hard-earned cash wisely. Last week, we shared about the 70-200 mm f/2.8 telephoto zoom lens. This week, I’ll be tackling a lens that is just as important, especially for wedding and engagement photographers!

 

 

What IS a Macro Lens?

A macro lens, or as some people call them, a micro lens, is a specialized prime lens used for getting really close up shots, often of very small subjects like flowers, insects — or in our case — an engagement ring! While most non-macro lenses have a minimum focus distance of a few feet or more, a macro lens often measure its minimum focus distance in inches.

 

This is just a fancy way of saying you can get right up close to your subject and still get the image in focus! If that’s still doesn’t make a lot of intuitive sense, next time you’re holding your camera, hold your hand out in front of your lens, and try to focus your camera on your hand. You’ll probably notice that your lens can’t focus until your hand is at least a foot or two away from the front of the lens. But on a macro lens, you can still focus even if you bring your hand right up close to the lens!

 

At the end of the day, macro lenses allows photographers to get really beautiful photos of even the smallest details, like these photos you see here.

 

 

Another thing that’s unique about a macro lens is that the focus ring on the outside that manually adjusts your lens’ focus is much wider, because you’ll often find yourself actually using manual focus when shooting tight detail photos. 

 

Speaking of manual focus, because macro lenses allow you to capture such tight photos with such a dreamy, shallow depth of field, you need to get right up close to your subjects and be very intentional about where you focus. That’s why I often end up crouched down or even lying down when I take macro shots!

 

 

When Do We Use a Macro Lens?

So when do we use our macro lens? Honestly… JUST detail photos! Our macro lens usually starts the day on my camera as I photographs our couples’ details, and… that’s really all we use it for 🤷‍♂️ After I’m done shooting details (usually first thing in the morning on a wedding day) the macro lens goes back in our camera bag and stays there for the rest of the wedding. On engagement sessions, we might pull it out during intermission while our couple changes into their second outfits to shoot a few photos of the engagement ring. If not, we don’t even use it during portraits!

 

So, if we only use the lens for a handful of photos on an engagement session or wedding day, is it really even worth buying a macro lens? The answer to that question depends on where you are in your photography business.

 

We didn’t own a macro lens for the first few years of our wedding career. We just took photos with our prime lenses like this one below on the left, and figured that was a good enough representation of our couples’ details. And with some tight cropping, it did a decent job!  However once we actually purchased a macro lens and saw the kind of detail shots that were possible, we realized how much more of a high-end and luxury vibe these kinds of images showed (see below on the right)!

 

 

So, Do I Need a Macro Lens or Not?

If you’re just getting started in your portrait or wedding photography business, a high-end macro lens is definitely a luxury, and not one you need right now. Our advice would be to learn from our mistakes and skip the photo we showed above (on the right), where the ring only made up 5% or 10% of the frame, and just capture beautiful interaction-based photos (like this one below) that will still showcase the ring but also the interactions that give the ring meaning. You can get a photo like what you see below with whatever prime lens you’re already shooting portraits with!

 

 

But if you want to eventually shoot high-end weddings, our experience has been that detail photos become more and more important as you charge more and more for your services. High-end detail photos like what you see below are one way that your work can and should stand above beginner photographer portfolios if you want to charge more premium prices.

 

 

So, Which Macro Lens Should I Buy?

As always, you have a range of options, depending on how much you’re willing to spend. As a general rule, the longer the focal length on a macro lens, the more it’s going to cost.  That’s because longer focal lengths allow you to get even tighter shots of smaller objects. And since our main objective as wedding and portrait photographers with a  macro lens is to shoot teeny-tiny wedding rings, you’ll want something with a decent amount of zoom!

 

On the Nikon side of things, there are new f/2.8 macro lenses ranging from $300 to $900 for DSLR cameras, and ranging from $700 to $1,000 for mirrorless cameras. Like we just mentioned, how much you spend depends on how long of a focal length you want.

 

Personally, in the early days of our wedding photography business, we opted to save a little money and  purchased a Tamron 90 mm macro lens, that we’re still using to this day. Although to be fair, the only reason we’re still using it because the Nikon mirrorless macro lenses have been on backorder for the last six months! It was a fantastic lens when we were shooting with Nikon DSLR cameras, and it still takes great images, but the autofocus is really temperamental with our mirrorless cameras. So we’ll likely upgrade to the Nikon mirrorless macro soon!

 

 

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading 😊

 

Want More?

 

Click HERE to get your free copy of our eBook: “5 Essential Tips for Turning your Side-Hustle into a Full-Time Photography Business.” You’ll also be subscribed to our newsletter, so our newest content, weekly encouragement, and exclusive offers will be delivered right to your inbox!

 

 

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Shopping List!

If you’re planning to purchase anything that we talked about today and we helped you make your decision, it would mean SO much to us if you purchased it through the links below! You’ll pay the same price as you normally would on Amazon, but Amazon would share a small slice of the profit with us. You’ll get what you need, support a small local business (us), and show us that our advice really has been helpful! Thanks! [Prices shown as of date of publishing, and are just for comparison/reference]

 

Mirrorless:

• Nikon Z 50 mm f/2.8 Macro [$650]
• Nikon Z 105 mm f/2.8 Macro [$1,000]

DSLR:

• Nikon F-Mount 40 mm f/2.8 [$300]
• Nikon F-Mount 60 mm f/2.8 [$600]
• Nikon F-Mount 105 mm f/2.8 [$900]
• Tamron 90 mm f/ for Nikon [$700]

 

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Check out the rest of the series below!

• • Camera Bag Essentials 0: DSLR vs Mirrorless: Nikon D750 vs Z6 vs Z6ii
  • Camera Bag Essentials 1: Prime Lenses: 85mm vs 50mm vs 35mm
  • Camera Bag Essentials 2: Wide Angle Lenses: 35mm vs 24-70mm vs 14-24mm
  • Camera Bag Essentials 3: Four Reasons to Buy a Telephoto Zoom Lens: The 70-200mm f/2.8
  • Camera Bag Essentials 4: How to Up Your Detail-Photo Game with a Macro Lens
  • Camera Bag Essentials 5: Using Reflectors and Flashes as a Natural Light Wedding Photographer
  • Camera Bag Essentials 6: Why We Used Off-Camera Flash as Wedding Photographers… But Don’t Anymore
  • Camera Bag Essentials 7: How to Know When It’s Time to Upgrade Your Camera Body
  • Camera Bag Essentials 8: How to Know When You’re Ready for a New Prime Lens
  • Camera Bag Essentials 9: Everything You Need to Know to Protect Your Camera Gear
  • Camera Bag Essentials 10: 10 Wedding Photography Accessories You Didn’t Know You Needed