I'm very intrigued by the 4 macro lenses that Nikkor offers:...
Does anyone use them?
Phil :
I've shot with a Zeiss Luminar 25mm f/3.5, which is a similar lens. Bjørn Rørslett's discussions are not the only ones on the internet, but they're pretty cogent for this sort of thing.
Chris is correct - you need a bellows for best results with the Luminars, Photars, and Macro-Nikkors. I use a Nikon PB-4 for my shooting, but almost any bellows that your body will mate to along with an RMS mount for the (true) macro lens will work. The magnification factors are not intuitive, and I in fact purchased a manual for the Zeiss lenses so that I could better plan the photography.
In all candor, shooting with these lenses is an exercise in extreme patience. The DOF is literally razor-thin, perhaps better described as microtome thin, requires exceptionally good lighting, and a lot of care in set-up.
These lenses are usually very very expensive, and a good bellows itself is not cheap. Going down this road is not like getting, say, a 105mm VR lens, which one can quickly "turn around", as the resale of this kind of gear doesn't proceed as quickly.
You might also explore reversed lens macro photography, which offers similar capabilities at reduced cost. There has been some quite fine work displayed here in the Café, most recently by "mdsign", but a search here will turn up a lot of work. Reversed lens shooting is just as painstaking, however, as the Macro-Nikkor type of systems.
Using either the Macro-Nikkor type of lenses or reversed lenses does yield results well outside the usual "macro" lenses that folks purchase. It's literally another entire world of photography, and there are several books that detail this type of work.
I'm traveling right now, or I'd offer more info on this for you. Let me know if you need more, and I'll try to pull more together when I'm home.
John P.
