ryan;200777 said:
very cool. is that the closest you can get with it? when people get the super close up shots are they cropping the image? or is there a way to get even closer?
With a longer focal length you can stay further away from the subject...or get closer and have a very detailed close-up shot without cropping. The thing about cropping an image taken with a macro is that you will often lose sharpness rather quickly, especially if you didn't use a tripod to take the picture. With a 180mm macro you can get great shots (like the insect you posted) but the slightest bit of movement is amplified by the longer focal length. Long story short, many of those very close shots are taken with a tripod, and then cropped to get that level of detail...you just need a sharp, focused image to pull that off...which is one advantage of going with a professional grade lens.
A couple examples...
Uncropped 90mm Tamron macro:
The goby was about 10 inches from the lens...still plenty of detail but the camera can focus much closer. I took the pic without a tripod and got lucky.
Another uncropped image with the same lens, taken as close to the colony as I could get while keeping it in focus:
The same image cropped:
You can start to see the loss of sharpness. The pic was taken with a tripod...but you can only crop so much due to how the photosensors process the picture; you're also somewhat limited by how many megapixels your camera is when you start cropping.
They have "macro" adapters that magnify images, you can place them between the lens and your camera body. That would be the better option for getting very close pictures with a macro lens... you don't lose details like you do when you crop too much.