Wow! Very impressing photos! Many thanks for the info :)

Excellent photo, Camille. I love the gentle bokeh of the red mushroom! I've used the legendary, 1st generation Tamron SP 90mm/f2.5 macro (52B) more than 20 years ago. It was famous for the tasteful bokeh (probably due to the circular aperture diaphragms).

Wow nice pictures. I have found one of those red mushrooms once, they are very cool and yes poisonous. I love mushroom hunting.

The family of mushrooms against the tree is my favorite. Just magical. Reminds me of college ;)

Great photos Camille!

You are so right, an expensive hobby, worse than Orchids it seems :coverlaugh:

We did the tripod a few years ago, this year hubbie's just ordered himself a proper flash... we've been doing long exposures on the tripod to get the orchid shots till now.

The great shots you get from proper camera/lens is worth it though :)

Wow!! Those are some amazing pictures. It's difficult to get that kind of sharpness without a tripod. Good job. That seems to be an excellent lens. I have an 85 mm Nikkor macro lens and I love it. If I had any experience before buying my lens, I might have gone to the 105 mm macro. It's so much easier to get good photos when you can stand back at a reasonable distance. It also means that you're far enough back that you don't block the available light.

VERY nice images, indeed. If you do lots of insects, consider the Canon MPE 65 mm. Most insects are small (Cocinnella/Adalia septempunctata), so even 1:1 still leaves them small. With the MPE 65 you can get to 5:1, with a 1.4x TC to 7:1, with 2x TC to 10:1. With that lens, though, flash is almost a pre-requisite; I use the MX24 twin macro mostly.

@Tucker: re sharpness handheld, if you remember longest time hand-held = 1/focal length, (so for 90 mm [35 mm/full frame equivalent] = 1/100 or 1/125), then you can get sharp images with proper body support, breathing technique, and slowly depressing shutter. Tripod still helps.
85 mm MicroNikkor? I thought Nikon has 55 and 105 Micros.

I was just looking myself into adding to the macro lenses, and Tamron and Canon are pretty darn close [still can't beat Zeiss]. Had some CC reward points and traded them in for a Canon 180 mm macro :-) Free lens!

Re focus, I have never used AF for macro. Just turn it off permanently, and it will be easier than having to fight AF. If you can, get a matt focusing screen for your body. Using the LCD screen with LiveView (if you have it) is another option. I like it quite a bit, but it only permits placing focal plane. With DOF preview button pressed, often there is too little light coming through.

Interesting, that you are looking into ND grads, rather than doing HDR. I have the Lee sets, and rather use the hard edge than the soft edge. I mainly use them on 4x5" as those chromes do not permit RAW processing ;-) I have used them also for video on my 5D mkii.

Keep up the good work, those are gorgeous! I'll have to wait till about Feb/March for the mushrooms to come out in SoCal.

Very nice pictures, makes me want to get a new camera for Christmas.

Though I say I shoot handheld, it's with all the tricks you mention! I've learned how to use my body as a 'tripod', and press the shutter very slowly while holding my breath... And I try to make use of what's around me, like trees or rocks or even the ground, or my bicycle. I think doing it this way, in combiniation with using a prime lens, makes me think a whole lot more about composition than if I had a tripod that I could easily move around and adjust.

Now as to the filters... I'm not a big fan of heavy post processing, my goal is to learn how to do as much as possible in camera. It also feels more rewarding to me to do it that way. I'm a bit old school I guess. That and also because I have yet to find a good freeware/ low cost HDR software.

A colleague has the Canon MP-E 65mm, and wow is it amazing! The tricky bit is getting the insect models to sit still... Aside from her job as a post-doc, she and 2 other people in our group have a photo business specializing in insect macro photography (since we all work in entomology)

And I've never heard of focusing screens, will have to look it up! Though with the Liveview it's possible to focus quite precisely with the 10x magnification.