Nikon Z MC 105mm f/2.8 VR S Real World Review | The best macro lens?
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- Опубліковано 7 сер 2024
- The Nikon Nikkor Z MC 105mm f2.8 VR S is an incredibly versatile lens not just for macro photography, but is also great for capturing many different subjects from portraits to landscapes and more besides. It features fast autofocus, effective stabilization, and is remarkably lightweight. In this review video I travel around the Pacific Northwest and bring you my thoughts on this magnificent optic from Nikon while out shooting with it and the Nikon Z9 in the field.
Other gear used:
GoPro Hero 10 Black
DJI Mic
DJI Action 2
Nikon Z6
#Photography #Nikon #NikonZ9 #Review #MacroPhotography - Наука та технологія
Nice Job! At 18:35 I really wanted you to get right in there with those swarming ants. Another strong aspect that was defeated in that same ant sequence... the choice of music over the sounds they make. Hearing thousands of tiny feet partnered with ultra-close video would have been extraordinary. Thumbs up, and I wish you all the best as you continue to capture the world around you!
Thank you! Getting good clean audio of subjects like this is really tricky. I've been working in that aspect of videograohy recently, and I hope to soon feature more natural audio in my videos.
Thanks for taking the time to make this review.
Excellent location and phenomenal photos and a job well done
Enjoyed the review, thanks for sharing.
Glad you enjoyed it!
This is the kind of review I was looking for! Thank you for all the great inspiration. I’ll buy this lens tomorrow.
Thanks, glad you found my review inspiring - this lens has become an absolutely essential part of my kit!
Fantastic footage of the sand fleas!
Beautifully done! This was exactly the type of footage i was looking for in a review video. I'm completely traumatized by the sand fleas and ants, so I suppose you communicated effectively!
Came for the MC 105 review and some confirmation bias (I have one, and a Z9) and subbed for the quality and nature of your content. Like your style.
Cheers from the other great coast, Maine.
Thank you very much! :)
What a great and inspirational video to tempt me into trying out Macro photography. I’m presently debating the 90mm 2.8 for Sony E mount or the Nikon 105 2.8 for the Z8.
Great video. Thank you!
great work
Great video! The DX crop mode is a great idea in combination with this lens! Subscribed
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed the video, and thanks for subscribing! :)
Good video Sharing
Enjoyable video with terrific photos.
Thank you!
Great video and nice thoughts, thanks! Keep an eye on sync on your next video...
Thanks for sharing, started watching your videos, subscribed
Thank you!
Nice job, would have like your showing how well it works with focus stacking and maybe a bit more detail on the lens features…… but it is a free review so I should not be to picky hahaha….. seriously though thanks for the review
NICE WORK....STUNNING REALLY
glad to see the people that got their hands on this camera, weren't the reviewers ,but the people with real talent
@@thegreatskate8360 Thanks! It was a long wait (for both camera and lens), but it was worth it. Glad to hear you enjoy my work!
Hey Mate, thanks for the video. Makes my Investment decision a little easier. Havent Seen yohr channel before.
Great! Glad you found it helpful. :)
Just a little long term update: this lens has become truly indispensable to me. One of my best camera-gear investments ever.
I predict fast growth to your channel.
thanks, becouse of my budget i will stick with my loawa for now, but this seems like an excellent lens as well
The Laowa is great, absolutely fantastic image quality!
Nice photos. What AF mode did you find worked the best on the Z9 for your stills photos?
I found that I prefer 3D tracking for stills of macro subjects with the Z9 and the 105.
Very interesting video! Are those sand fleas the same type that bite your dog? What was your favorite focus mode for macro on Z9?
They're actually a variety of shrimp, they only get called "Sand Fleas" because they're so small and they hop around like fleas - they do bite though! For macro I find that I tend to prefer 3D tracking AF.
Very Nice Flower
Maybe too sharp for portraits at 45.6MP? In DxO Mark, I believe, the Z 85/1.8S is the sharpest lens they ever tested. I have both the 105 and the 85. To me it seems that, in general, the 105 is a bit smoother.
Shooting portraits with macro lenses (especially in the studio) is an old insider pro secret.
Lenses with a fixed element arrangement that focus by shifting all elements front and back at the same time, would have been optimized in their optical design for infinity focus. Anything closer by would take away from that.
Macro lenses would be optimized for much closer by and this would bring portraits in the sweet spot.
As you'd shoot with strobes anyway and an abstract studio background, you generally shot at, say, f/11, so the difference between f/2.8, f/1.8 or f/1.4, f/1.2 totally became irrelevant.
The studio pack strobes with proportional modeling light would provide enough light in the SLR viewfinder for focusing precisely.
Under "ceteris paribus" assumption, the Depth of Field (DoF) of f/2.8 in the 105mm compares to f/2.3 in the 85mm.
But that only holds if both lenses have the same lp/mm resolution, because if not then ceteris paribus is broken.
I can only say that this lens is phenomenal. It has its rather big size against it, but weighs much less than the visual impression it makes that raises our expectation.
As I still have old negatives to digitize and the flatbed scanner too but find this a hassle, I bought the Nikon ES-2 slide copying adapter.
It has the same filter size as this lens right? Yes, but the tube with the ES-2 needs to be about 2 times longer, so it doesn't work.
Not wanting to spend money on a Z 50mm macro lens, and not being able to find a simple tube to fix the ES-2, I bought two of the cheapest UV/nothing filters in a brass ring and some 10 even cheaper (couple USD each) filters in aluminum ring. Broke the glass out and created the tube from a stack of Al rings that I terminated with a brass one on either end. Brass lubricates the filter thread better, is friendlier to the lens's or ES-2's thread.
Works excellently. Here it is a pity that the Z system does not come with the D850's negative reversal firmware. Well, I bought Negative Lab Pro to fix that and it is great.
Too sharp? Well, how you look at that depends on your raw processing software. My experience with Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) is that it stinks at detail recovery, compared with other software. Topaz Gigapixel AI (TGAI) is way better at it.
In ACR, I generally do not "sharpen" my images away from "default" as, IMO, this increases the forming of artifacts. These would become worse when you scale your image up or down. Having upsampled my images with TGAI.
My impression is that it is easier to get smooth larger than 100% and smaller than 100% depictions like prints from the best detail retrieval.
That said, in some cases like weathered female faces, you would want some AI to be able to get the deeper grooves away without resulting in plastic skin looks.
In NX Studio, Nikon have their own approach to raw processing. And that is fundamentally different than ACR (which does the work in both Lightroom Classic and Photoshop - LrC hides the plugin character of ACR in its UI, Ps doesn't).
Where ACR also stinks is at noise processing. A raw file is 100% color noise and we could argue 100% luminance noise too. Shoot a reference card like a ColorChecker Passport and now look in the raw file at the data representing a red patch in the card. You'll see monochrome data elements that represent an EV in 14 bits digital that either have measured in the red zone of the humanly visible spectrum, or in the green, or in the blue. There's ZERO RGB here. There are no pixels here. Just downright ugly noise.
Raw processing now needs to do two things: (a) convert each monochrome data element into an RGB pixel, (b) deal with depiction of lines, edges and gradations that do not align with the sensor grid (aliasing, banding, etc.).
As long as we see "grain" or "noise" inside the camera's dynamic range, then this is just plain failed raw processing. We may find noise acceptable only at the extreme edge of the camera's dynamic range where there is uncertainty about the precise EV. That almost never happens. But in ACR, we see grain all the time, especially in slightly dimmer than average background blur. Just run the image through Topaz DeNoise AI and it is gone. Or DxO PureRAW (a plugin taken from PhotoLab, so PhotoLab can do it too).
Here again, starting with an image that got raw processed better makes the end result look much nicer at any magnification.
If you need LrC's asset management and non-destructive corrections, if you still need Photoshop after all, then you cannot do without this duo. But that does not mean we are satisfied with how our subscription-shareholder money was invested by the Mudbricks who spent our money on bonuses and new code streams on new platforms that do the same things in new code thus adding to the baseline costs of the corporation. Rather than making the raw conversion a lot better and faster. Imagine that a Nikon camera that runs is eVF 60FPS does 60 FPS raw processing and compression to eVF resolution, potentially to the rear display too, while writing a raw file to card and in the meantime saving a complete 100% JPEG to card as well. Now imagine in stead of stills it does the raw processing of 60FPS 8K.
With that in mind, export, say, 20 raw stills to 100% JPEG in LrC. So slow.
That’s not a comment, that’s an essay!
Fantastic video and stunning pictures, I noticed in your comments that you also used a Z6. How did you use the z6 for videoing? thank you for sharing!
Thanks! The Z6 was only used for a few still photos here (no video), and I'd have to go back to the project files and dig through them to remember which few where the Z6. To be honest, I don't use the Z6 that much since I got the Z9 lol.
Thank you
@Illuminationsfromtheattic Hi there, thnx for the review. Wich one do you prefer? The laowa 2x or the Nikon 105? Greetings from the Netherlands
Hi, sorry for the late reply, I didn't see your comment! In answer to your question, I think I prefer the Nikon 105 because of the AF and IS. It's easier to use hand-held. However, the Laowa is awesome too, as sharp or sharper, has that extra macro capability, and is cheaper.
great
I like view beautiful
your hair is magnificent
Thanks lol!
What I don’t personally like is that the subject is blur . I understand the bokeh idea but yet the idea is to get complete sharp object at lest for me … if you play with aperture it’s change ?
Frodo?