[brownargus]

I think you're mistaken there. Cropping is exactly the same as using a longer focal length lens - if you crop the image so that the subject fills the frame it's going to have the same depth of field as if you had taken it with a focal length long enough to have the subject fill the frame (assuming the same f/number was used for both shots).

Have a look at my two macro pictures posted above. In the full-frame version the bee looks to be mostly in focus, but in the cropped view you can see that only part of it is.

Sorry, you misunderstand. The attached two shots, scanned from slides, illustrate. The first was taken with a 105 macro lens at a distance to fill the frame; the second was taken with the same lens at a distance away and the final shot cropped about 2/3rds to give an image size similar to the first shot. You will see that in the first image the antenae are out of focus whilst in the second they are sharp to the ends. Sorry about the quality of the slides, they are quite grainy from using 400 ISO film.

John

Attached Images

   

[Douglas_of_Sweden]

i had a 70-300mm and am waiting for my 18-250mm and can take some nice macro shots with that considering the zoom is fairly big. i'm curious to know how exactly you can shoot macro with a 50mm or 35mm and still be able to get wicked crisp images of animals like bees and others that move when you get too close :S

It helps if they move very slow because of low temperatures in the air. It is sad, but I found this bee on my car window a few weeks ago. It was too cold to move with any speed. Now it is probably dead. I'm happy to be a mammal when the winter comes. DA35/2.8 macro limited hand held. Some cropping. Had to live with short DOF since there were no way to put the tripod on the car hood.




It also helps if they are slow animals from the start! Same lens.