Congratulations on your new appointment Melissa!
I am really quite ignorant about photographic equipment and lenses and such and photography in general so cannot really advise as to what would be the perfect lens for your task, however...
in the thread 'Camera recommendations?' you said
shadytrake said: I found a nice deal on eBay for a Nikon D5200 that had less than 5 shutter clicks. Standard kit lens Nikkor 18-55mm. Plus it had a 32GB SD card, wireless remote, wireless adapter, extra battery, and the Nikon D5200 field manual. $450 and included a case as well.
I have looked into the macro lenses for the Nikon and there are many reviews. Not sure yet what I will get. I want to see what the limits are on the 18-55mm lens. I hope that I have made a good choice. It should arrive on Wednesday.
I think you got a heck of a steal there!
see what you can do with your new equipment before you add to it...
Also, just as an observation--you do have the entire orchid in the frame there in that first one, confirming that you had a wide enough angle lens for that shot anyway, but the focus looks to me like it is more toward the back of the plant, which at f22 I imagine also gave you a fairly identifiable background or at least the lint detail
This is not necessarily a problem with the lens and lighting.
Presumably, it would be nice to have more of the blooms in focus and less of the background, right?
When I was using a variable focal point lens and auto-focus, one thing I did to help with that was to set the thing to a single point of focus, zoom in and focus on the front most flower, then keeping that focal plane (with the button half-pressed), back out again to include the entire plant. In the event that the flowers or buds or whatever, were too small or not contrasty enough for the auto focus thingy to find them well enough, I would then focus at that same plane--the front of the plant--but on something bigger, even the base of the plant, and then move the frame back up to include the thing I wanted that auto-focus couldn't find.
I don't know if that helps much, or if I just sound like an idiot
(I'm used to the idiot thing but I hope it helps)
Anyway, I found that by ensuring focus on the front of the subject, with higher 'fs' like that, it gave better results.
