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Man 1: You're watching Adorama TV.
Mark Wallace: Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of Adorama TV. I'm Mark Wallace.
We're going to be talking about some Nikon Macro products. We have tons to talk about,
so let's start by talking about this lens. This is the Nikkor 105mm F2.8G lens from macro
photography. It's just under $900, and it is a spectacular lens.
I shot with this guy on the D90, on the D3S, the D3X and some other Nikon cameras. Across
the board I got stellar results. The nice thing is this has vibration reduction, so
I was actually able to shoot handheld in a lot of instances and even get away with shutter
speeds as slow as 1/15 of a second. I know that's pushing the limits. I don't recommend
that, but I was able to do that with this lens which is pretty spectacular.
Now these images were tack sharp, the color looked amazing. The only thing that I would
say that I would change about this lens - I really wouldn't change it except for the label.
So this says this is a 2.8 lens. It is a 2.8 lens, but it actually is a 2.824.8 lens based
on your focusing distance. To get a 2.8 aperture out of this guy, you have to be focusing at
something at 10 feet or farther away. Anything closer than that, you're going to be pushing
up to the 3, 5, 4, eight range on your aperture which isn't a big deal because with the macro
lens you're probably going to want to be shooting somewhere around F11 or something for your
depth of field. But just to note, it doesn't really clarify that this is a variable aperture
lens. So 2.8 all the way up to F22, but it varies based on your focusing distance.
I highly recommend this lens. I took pictures indoors and outdoors and close up and far
away. Across the board I didn't get a single image that I was disappointed with unless
it was something that I was doing wrong like composition or just being an idiot. So this
lens, I love it. I highly recommend it. I think it's my favorite macro lens for the
Nikon.
In addition to the Nikon lenses, really what you need for successful macro photography,
you need a nice tripod but you also need some nice flash gear. Nikon has a kit, and this
is the Nikon R1C1 Wireless Close-up Speedlight System. It's a big mouthful, but it all comes
in this box here. It's just over $700, and I can't believe all the stuff that's inside
here.
So let's start by showing you a couple of things. When you open up the case you'll see
that you have this big diffusion panel right here. I'll show you how this works here in
a second, so I'm just going to lay this to the side. The other thing you have is you
have these little clampy things, and again I'll show you what these do in a second. So
I'm going to set this to the side and open up this case here. Inside there is just a
ton of equipment, so it will allow you to use your flashes in different configurations
on different lenses and all kinds of things.
Let me walk you through what's in here. The stars of the show is actually you have a couple
of little wireless speedlights. These are the SB-R Speedlights. Two of those come in
this system. Then you have a control unit. This guy goes right on your camera. This is
all wireless control. You can take these - they have a standard Â¼-20 thread on them, you
have some mounting brackets - but you can put these off camera and do all kinds of things
with them. But normally you're going to want to mount these to the end of your lens.
Let me show you what this guy has. To do that, what you need in a lot of instances are some
step down rings. This one actually fits this lens very nicely, so I'll just screw that
on there. That's really cool. Then the other thing that this has inside of it is this big
ring here, and I'll pop this out. What the ring does is allows you to mount this to your
camera. So I'll just stick this on here like this. Now I've got this ring mounted to my
camera, and it all looks good.
The thing that's really cool about this is now these guys, they have this little switch
on the bottom here. They just mount right on there, they snap on. So I'll snap this
other guy on here. So it snaps on. Now I've got these two flashes on the end of my lens.
The neat thing is I can move these around, and they'll lock into place. Then I can move
them at different angles. Then if I want I can always take one of these guys off and
mount it off camera. Because it's totally wireless, you have a lot of options of how
this works.
Earlier I talked about this diffusion panel, so let me talk to you about this works. This
little guy here, this clamp, actually clamps right onto this ring. Then I can put this
diffusion panel on here and I can use it to diffuse, perhaps, one of these flashes. So
I'll just zip this around here. If I had some more time I could do this a little bit better,
but you get the idea. I can put this so it diffuses one of these lights, or if I just
had natural sunlight I can actually maybe put this over a flower or something and diffuse
that light hitting my subject. I can even clamp this on a branch or something. So I've
got this nice diffusion, and I have this clamp to hold that. I could probably use this to
hold branches and other things that are in my shot. So a lot of options just with those
two things.
Now let's talk about some of the other things. Earlier I talked about this step down ring.
They have six of these guys in here. There's six different step down rings. Depending on
the size of lens you have, you're going to need to use a different size step down ring
so that this ring will fit exactly on your lens, so a lot of options there. For mounting
your little speedlights, you have these stands. This will mount into that stand, and there's
two of those. So if you want to mount these on a table or something, and again you can
control those wirelessly, you have those stands. Those are in there.
You have two of these packets here. These packets are for putting some gels on the light.
So to make that really easy there are two of these clear plastic covers. Let me show
you how this works really quickly. I'm going to open this up. I'm going to take out a piece
of green gel here. This green gel is for correcting for fluorescent light, and it fits exactly
inside this clear plastic cover.
So we've got that nice gel right there. Then that fits right over this, so what you have
here - if I put it on the correct way, there we go - is you have a nice gel that is over
your flash. And you can do this with both. That's why you have two of these little guys.
You have one for each side, so then you can add red or blue or you can do some warming
or cooling gels so that you can really control the color temperature. That's really nice.
You've got this whole system in there.
There's even more stuff in there. If you want to have some softer light, there are two of
these guys. What they are, they actually slide right on the flash, so you get some nice cooling
out of this guy. I think, oh right, it actually goes onto this, and then it snaps on. So I
did this out of order. Sorry about that. I'll snap that on. Then this snaps on. You can
actually put your gel and your diffusion right on there, and that will stick right on there.
So you have nice soft light, and you can have nice colored light as well.
All of this works together. You can again see that I have my green gel inside this diffusion.
All of this stuff works together to create a whole system. This gives you more of that
really nice soft light you would get more out of a macro ring light. So you get the
benefits of both soft light and hard light, and you can control the color temperature
of your light.
There's even more stuff in here. There's one more little doohickey in here that I really
like. This guy is for using your camera as a commander. So if I'm using this as a commander
and I don't want my pop up flash to interfere with my shot, I can actually throw that down.
Now my flash is going to be blocked by that. So I have the ability to use my camera as
commander, but I can also make sure that my flash is not going to interfere with my macro
shot, which is really, really nice.
This is a very, very robust system. You have external speedlights, you have control wirelessly.
This, by the way, I didn't really talk about it, but this is the SU600, this is the commander
unit. I'm sorry the SU800. It's the commander unit. This allows you to do ratio control,
so you can change the ratios between these. You can do exposure compensation. You can
control external speedlights as well.
So if you want to add more speedlights to this and control those in zones, you can with
this. All the control that you're used to with your SB900 you have right here with this
guy, the SU800. So you can control not only these guys, but you can control remote flashes
that are more traditional as well from this guy, which is really nice.
Then if you really want to for some reason, I don't know why you would, you can actually
cable all of this stuff and get rid of the wireless. It doesn't come with cables. I'm
not sure why you would want to do that, but it's an option for you as well. It's a complete
system for macro photography. So if you're a macro enthusiast or professional photographer,
you're doing some commercial work, this is a great option for you. If you're just an
enthusiast this also works. It deals with the entire spread of abilities. I highly recommend
it.
Again, the macro lighting system is about $730, the lens about $890. Together they provide
you with a very, very nice system for shooting macro photography.
Thanks for joining us this week. Remember, if you have questions about photography you
can send those to me at askmark@adorama.com. And you can see our past reviews of products
at the Adorama Learning Center. I hope you go check it out. Thanks for joining us. I'll
see you again next week.
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