Do I need a dedicated Z macro lens?

[jcgamble]

Caught this Rainbow Scarab beetle yesterday and photographed it in the grass with my Z9 and Z 100-400 f4.5-5.6 at 400mm. Just thought I would share as I was surprised how sharp it was. Hard to think I need to drag a macro lens around for occasional shots like this. Your thoughts?

 

[DRwyoming]

Great image.

Sounds like you answered your own question, if macro is only an occasional thing and you already own the 100-400 with its excellent short working distance you probably don’t need a dedicated macro lens.

If you want to get down to 1:1 macro (being able to fill the frame with a scene the same size as your sensor) and you’ll do a lot of that kind of work then a dedicated macro lens could make sense.

 

[bleirer]

I'd say for occasional close ups of larger bugs and flowers you are fine. A extension tube could get you a little closer. Macro though as defined by 1:1 magnification or at least .5x I would want the dedicated lens.

 

[JAJohnson]

When I had it I found the Z 100-400 lens to be superb as a macro lens, particularly at 100mm.

 

[bleirer]

With the .38x magnification it gets one part of the way to macro. I assumed that was at the 400 end though.

 

[JAJohnson]

With the .38x magnification it gets one part of the way to macro. I assumed that was at the 400 end though.

I have wonderful closeup photos of flowers and insects from the wide and telephoto ends of the lens but at th wide end the minimum focus distance is shorter. I find I like those photos better. It’s all subjective, of course.

I didn’t keep that lens because I bought a 180-600 and I already had the 105 macro.

 

[bleirer]

Just looking it up on Google, yes the minimum focus distance at 100 is 2.46 feet and at 400 3.22, but there is more magnification added by the 400 so it nets out a little larger at the long end. It's all good if we get the shot though.

 

[EricBowles]

Caught this Rainbow Scarab beetle yesterday and photographed it in the grass with my Z9 and Z 100-400 f4.5-5.6 at 400mm. Just thought I would share as I was surprised how sharp it was. Hard to think I need to drag a macro lens around for occasional shots like this. Your thoughts?

Normally macro is considered 2:1 or more magnified. What this means is a 70 mm wide subject fits edge to edge on your full frame sensor. That combines both closer minimum focus and more magnification. The Nikon Z macro lenses - referred to as MC lenses - get you to 1:1 magnification without any accessories. This means a 35mm wide subject fills the sensor edge to edge without cropping.

Your 100-400 has a magnification ratio of 0.38 times which means 2.63:1 magnification. Filling the frame would mean a subject that is 93mm in length. You can crop the image and increase the resulting size of the image compared to the frame edges, but you are losing detail and it limits your ability to make larger prints. A rainbow scarab beetle is 3/4 of an inch or 22 mm long.

If you made the exact same photo with an MC lens or other macro lens at closest focus distance, you would have a much more magnified image. That's good and bad as it means technique needs to be more precise, AF needs to be very accurate, and you might use focus shift to stack images. And with the same lens, you could back up and get the framing of your original image if that's what you prefer. But you have the option of much higher magnification - and could crop even deeper.

Here is your photo cropped to the approximate dimensions of the same image with a macro lens.

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

It depends on what you want to do. A lot of people are perfectly happy with a close up image such as 0.38 -0.75 magnification. That's what is typically used for photos of frogs, butterflies, dragonflies, flowers, etc. One of the big advantages of the 100-400 is the ability to use it as a close up lens for photos with these types of subjects. But if you want to photograph jewelry, stamps, coins, or high magnification of insects, a macro lens is very different.

 

[BillW]

I think Eric is right that it matters a lot what you want to photograph. I find the Z 100-400 is a very nice lens for butterflies, dragonflies, flowers, frogs and the like. Small subjects, but not tiny. I also think that a greater working distance for many of these subjects is very useful to avoid scaring them off (not needed for flowers). The Z 100-400 will give you more working distance than the Z 105 MC. And we do not have a Z mount macro with a longer focal length, at least from Nikon; not sure about others.

I was in Yellowstone in the winter of 2022. We saw some black flies (brine flies, I think) laying orange eggs in a greenish area of a thermal feature off the boardwalk near Old Faithful. I photographed them with my Z 100-400 (I had not brought my Z 105 MC along for the trip). Cropped the photo and it turned out ok, but not great. One of the other participants used her Z 105 MC lens to photograph the same flies and eggs. She was much closer and the flies, in this case, did not seem to care. Her photos of the flies were outstanding and much better than mine. Maybe not all due to the lens, but I think a significant portion was due to the lens.

 

[bleirer]

Unfortunately we get no free lunch when it comes to shooting farther away and then cropping. We lose the same dof we would have lost shooting it close up, if we had the lens to get that close.

 

[Anjin San]

If you really want 1:1…then an actual macro rated lens might be worth it. Like you…I use my 100-400 and a set of extension tubes and I can get close enough so an inch or so tall head on the statue I was using to test this pretty much filled the frame…so I didn't buy a dedicated one. Dedicated *might* be a little better IQ wise because of the way it's designed for close focusing distances primarily…but as I always say better is the enemy of good enough and my 100-400 is good enough