I asked recently what was the best Sony for wildlife which gave me lots of lenses and cameras to lookup. The other facet of photography which I tend to do is macro photography. I bumped into some reviews stating that some of the Sony cameras didn’t do well in low light. As macro is often done with minimal lighting I thought I would ask the question what are people using in terms of cameras and lenses in the Sony world of macro
I enjoy macro quite a bit. I have the Sony 90/2.8 G as well as the (manual) Voigtlander 110/2.5 and 65/2, all on an A7Riii body. I am not one to use flash though a lot of serious macro shooters go to relatively great lengths to do so even in the field.
I use Voigtlander Apo Lanthar 110/2.5 and Voigtlander Apo Lanthar 65/2 mostly and Sony G Macro 90/2.8 when I need autofocus.All that on A7R4A and other previous R/nonR Sony models.
I'm not sure who told you that Sony isn't great in low light, but that isn't true. They've been superb low-light performers with some of the best sensor tech for about a decade now.
The much older, A-mount Sony cameras, before the advent of mirrorless, were a third of a stop worse for low-light performance than every competing model because of the way they worked for focussing. That's not an issue any more.
To answer your question - yeah, any modern Sony camera can do well for macro. Do you need quick autofocus - are we talking about macro of moving bugs and things, or more studied, patient macro in controlled conditions? If the former, you need the best autofocus you can reasonably get, and it points you towards the newer models. But if the latter, then something like a Sony A7Rii, even, would be a superb macro camera. The A7Rii isn't super-responsive and doesn't have great tracking autofocus - but its focussing is reliable and it works well for slow, considered shooting, with a wonderful image quality from its 42 megapixel sensor.
And it has modifiable firmware, and there are people out there who developed a rudimentary "focus bracket" app you can install onto it, many years before the A7R5 implemented official focus bracketing support.
You can see how it works, here:
I'll add the caveat that the lens you use has to be a native E-mount lens with autofocus motors. Because the 'app' needs to be able to read distance information and interact with the focus motors well. So not any old adapted, non-native macro lens will work.
A7rV would be the best Sony camera available for macro,
Focus bracketing, different levels of raw, and the very usable crop mode would be great for giving you an extra stop of depth of field for effective size on your screen, also crop helps if you get into exotic lenses,
The sigma 105 macro is the sharpest auto focus lens available,
And the laowa 100mm 2x is the sharpest lens but manual focus,
I have the voigtlander 110 and find it excellent, I also have the laowa 2.5-5x another great lens,
I would pick the laowa 90mm over the 100, almost as sharp but smaller and lighter,
Also it is worth investigating some of the longer lenses for butterfly size stuff, the soon to be released 70-200f4 is supposed to have macro capabilities,
And lastly the longer the focal length of the lens the greater the subject working distance
I asked recently what was the best Sony for wildlife which gave me lots of lenses and cameras to lookup. The other facet of photography which I tend to do is macro photography. I bumped into some reviews stating that some of the Sony cameras didn’t do well in low light. As macro is often done with minimal lighting I thought I would ask the question what are people using in terms of cameras and lenses in the Sony world of macro
Thanks in advance
You have 2 excellent choices in macro lenses; Sony’s own 90mm f/2.8 G lens and Sigma 105mm f/2.8 lens. If you google both lenses, you will get several YT comparison reviews of the two. In general though, the Sigma renders slightly sharper at f/2.8 in the corners; if you stop down the aperture, the difference is negligible. The Sony has an optical stabilization system built-in; but if you use a tripod, the difference is moot. The AF is better on the Sony but how often do you need AF is macro range? The Sony is more expensive but it is slightly lighter and smaller. The bottom line is, either one will perform just fine for macro. You cannot go wrong with either, in other words. It is true that the slightly longer FL of the Sigma will enable you to be a tad further away from the target.
The notion that Sony cameras don’t do well in low light, as another FMer mentioned above already, is bogus. Where did you get that info?
I own the Sony 90 and used to own the Sigma 105 macro. I love shooting macro.
The Sony 90mm f/2.8 G OSS fills in nicely as a portrait and general short tele lens. In these applications, AF is a big plus. I missed having good AF when I owned the Sigma 105 Macro. The difference in AF speed and accuracy is night and day.
Reviewing a LOT of images from these two lenses taken in all sorts of situations, I was never able to observe a difference in sharpness. They are both critically sharp. I was never disappointed in the sharpness of either lens.
I prefer the color balance of the Sony - the Sigma 105 has a cooler and less punchy color palette.
The OSS on the Sony lens is very useful. With the ever-improving low light/high ISO IQ on Sony camera bodies, I find that I shoot more and more macro images handheld, and the OSS makes this a lot easier.
Finally, the push-pull AF/MF switch on the Sony 90 is ingenious and is unique in the E-Mount system.
I asked recently what was the best Sony for wildlife which gave me lots of lenses and cameras to lookup. The other facet of photography which I tend to do is macro photography. I bumped into some reviews stating that some of the Sony cameras didn’t do well in low light. As macro is often done with minimal lighting I thought I would ask the question what are people using in terms of cameras and lenses in the Sony world of macro
Thanks in advance
We have choices for sure. I bought the Sigma 105 f2.8 macro based on a pro friends recommendation. It was $300 less than the Sony which wasn't on sale at the time. Had I thought about it? I would have gone for the Sony since it has IS in the lens vs the Sigma which doesn't. But there is also the Laowa 90mm f2.8 2X macro to consider. My son in law has that and loves it.
Also Dustin Abbott reviewed both the Sony and Sigma and compares them in his Sigma review which came out a couple of weeks after he reviewed the Sony.
Yes, there are virtually no bad macro lenses out there. But the focus stacking feature in the A7r V makes AF lenses a little more attractive relative to MF lenses. That is if the camera in question is indeed the A7r V, of course. But again, you can still do focus stacking using MF lenses albeit a little less convenient.
Thank you everyone appreciate the feedback. I am familiar with Laowa lenses as I had a 65mm 2x lens on the Fuji and it was excellent all manual focus of course. It’s good there are several options out there. Still doing a bit of research on the camera (a7r5) definitely seems to tick the boxes for macro. Wildlife (even birding reasonably static birds) still uncertain. I would likely get the a7r5 with the 200-600 to start off with and start saving for the macro gear. A bit more reading and watching
Another option is an adapted Canon 100 macro. On lower-end bodies, this reportedly autofocuses faster than the Sony 90, and it can close to narrower apertures (f32, while the Sony 90 only goes to f22).
I prefer the Voigt 110 and 65mm over the Sony 90mm macro. Generally use MF for macro anyway. The other advantage for the Voigt in my opinion is that it is pretty darn good at infinity focus making it more versatile. if I had to pick one .. the 110 all the way
AGeoJO wrote:
You have 2 excellent choices in macro lenses; Sony’s own 90mm f/2.8 G lens and Sigma 105mm f/2.8 lens. If you google both lenses, you will get several YT comparison reviews of the two. In general though, the Sigma renders slightly sharper at f/2.8 in the corners; if you stop down the aperture, the difference is negligible. The Sony has an optical stabilization system built-in; but if you use a tripod, the difference is moot. The AF is better on the Sony but how often do you need AF is macro range? The Sony is more expensive but it is slightly lighter and smaller. The bottom line is, either one will perform just fine for macro. You cannot go wrong with either, in other words. It is true that the slightly longer FL of the Sigma will enable you to be a tad further away from the target.
The notion that Sony cameras don’t do well in low light, as another FMer mentioned above already, is bogus. Where did you get that info?...Show more →
Also worth mentioning that the usefulness of VR/IS falls off with closer focus, and as a result, it really seems that the Sony 90 doesn't have much over the Sigma, particularly when comparing for price.
It's almost pointless to bother with macro if you aren't using a flash and diffuser. The results are just infinitely better. Once I got a good flash and diffuser, it made me realize how all of my previous macro photos were garbage.
