Sample pictures taken with a Nikon 60mm F/2.8 ‘Micro’ lens
Pictures taken with Nikon 60mm Micro 1:1 F/2.8 Macro Lens.
Welcome to the macro world photography! We recently acquired an used copy of the Nikon 60mm F/2.8 1:1 macro lens at a price we couldn’t resist. Compared to our Tamron 90mm Macro lens, the lens is slightly smaller without the hood but a little heavier than the Tamron’s counterpart. Although this lens has a perfect focal lenght for portraits when used on a DSLR, we found a brutal harsh contrast on skin tones. Pictures (not shown here) of distance subjects (i.e. infinity) were not as good but in our opinion, this is to be expected from most macro lenses. Wide open at F/2.8 the lens proved to be tack sharp on subjects 8-10′ feet away. Although this lens is AF (auto focus), in real world macro photography, it shout be focused manually. We found its focusing ring sturdy enough to focus manually, a real pleasure to focus and a must when focusing at its maximum magnification; we know from other users differing from this feature and perhaps from our personal opinion. It has a nice Tokina’s ”clutch feel”. At 1:1 the lens gets to a nice 8.75” distance from the lens to the subject. While on a full 24x36mm film camera 60mm is not good enough for small insects, this can slightly change and improve on a 1.5x crop factor found on Nikon DSLRs cameras as it becomes a 90mm lens.
Due to the shallow DOF (depth-of-field) when shooting small subjects, this lens in many cases will be used in small apertures ranging from F16 to F/32. Due to diffraction, the lens will loose apparent resolution when used with small appertures. In our test shots using a Nikon D200 we were expecting this loss of resolution, however, we found out that our shots (below) taken at F/29, were surprisingly sharp thanks to Nikon’s CRC design (Close Range Correction).
-Great lens for table top-product photography and copy-
Approx street price for Nikon’s 60mm Micro 1:1 F/2.8 Macro Lens: $439.99 USD.
Note: We’ve found this lens to be modestly sharper when used at F/2.8 compared to our loyal 4 years old Tamron 90mm F/2.8 (non-Di).
