It’s just over eleven years ago that I won my Sony A700 and kit zoom lens. It was to be my introduction to digital photography. While not the direction I initially had in mind, hindsight tells me that if I had simply continued with film, then I would have eventually stopped due to the cost. I certainly wouldn’t have got into wildlife photography either, with the success rate being so much lower. I owe the Sony a lot. My new Nikon D800 is clearly superior at landscapes, street photography or simply snapping the cats at home. One thing it will never do though is birds, as I’m just not built to carry a lens long enough for the job and my little Canon Powershot will do to get me out to the reserves. However, I’ve been unable to make up my mind about bugs.
It’s my opinion that the bridge camera actually performs better in macro, but there are drawbacks. It gets too noisy over ISO 400, so can only be used on a bright day and yet the highlights get blown so very easily. There is also little choice about the aperture. The lens isn’t fast enough to get that beautiful shallow depth of field, nor can I stop it down enough to cover chubby little insects. I suddenly had a brainwave – to go back to the Sony and the 300mm macro lens I bought for it about three years ago. I had only used it a couple of times and the quality was bound to be better.
It was (a tad), as can be seen from the image of the mayfly below, but then I remembered why I stopped using this lens. It constantly hunted for focus, even in good light and for some bizarre reason, every single shot I took during my test outing was over-exposed. The Sony had never done that with my other lenses, so my gut feeling is they aren’t communicating properly. With so many problems, this isn’t a combination I am going to pursue, so the Sony was cleaned for the last time and put away safely in the study.
The photograph featured at the top was taken with the D800, proving that it does bugs very well indeed. The subject is (or was) a common red soldier beetle. I found this individual in our garden. He appears to have climbed to the top of a blade of grass where he simply… died. They are normally quite active, but after taking a few shots, I touched him gently and he didn’t respond. So he may be gone, but will never be forgotten, as I’m now using the Nikon for everything except birds. More bugs to come!
