First Look: Tamron 60mm Di F/2.0 Macro Lens This new lifesize macro lens features a 100mm working distance, enhanced anti-reflection coatings, and a superfast F/2.0 maximum aperture that results in artistic close-up photography.
By Jennifer Gidman Images by Don Gale & David Maynard |
Professional photographers David Maynard and Don Gale are both well-versed in macro photography and the techniques that best work with macro lenses. But even these pros were blown away by the capabilities of Tamron’s new 60mm Di macro lens, featuring an F/2.0 fast maximum aperture and a 9.1-inch minimum focusing distance. |
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“For fast-moving objects, my first lens of choice is going to be the 60mm,” says Maynard, who also uses the Tamron 180mm Di lens and the 90mm 1:1 F/2.8 for his macro work. “You set your center point on the viewfinder where you want it and simply put the camera in AI mode. So as you’re moving, it’s tracking constantly and you just pop the shots. I’m used to really good quality from Tamron, but I didn’t expect to see that kind of focusing capability.” |
Maynard, who enjoys using the 60mm to capture critters and creatures in addition to his commercial work (“I never grew out of bug mode from when I was a kid; I’m still absolutely fascinated by it”), took advantage of this fast-focusing capability in his image of a bee flying in to a flower. “The tail is moving a little because of the shutter speed,” he explains. “I actually tracked him with the AI and focused on his eyeball as he flew into the flower. That shows right there that the lens is capable of something that no other macro lens (to my knowledge) is capable of doing—actual AI tracking for focus. His face is tack-sharp.”
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The 60mm’s impressive minimum focusing distance came into play for a close-up of an orange grasshopper indigenous to the Deep South. “I was almost touching the grasshopper—that’s how powerful that minimum focusing distance is,” he says. “I couldn’t see because I was looking through the viewfinder, but I had four people observing me shoot, and they all said that when I got that shot, the grasshopper’s antenna was actually resting on the lens hood.”
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Gale, renowned for his nature and landscape photography, was also impressed with the minimum focusing distance on his own photos. “For the photo where the bee is covered in pollen on a flower, I manually set the lens to the minimum focusing distance,” he says. “I left it there and just moved myself in and out as the flower moved, instead of trying to manually change the focus or put it in autofocus.”
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Achieving beautifully blurred backgrounds is a hallmark of the 60mm lens, with the maximum F/2.0 aperture providing a shallower depth of field than that found on conventional F/2.8 lenses. “With that maximum F/2.0 aperture, it allows the background to drop out of focus unbelievably fast,” says Gale. “It blurs to the point where even things that would normally be distinct, like blades of grass, become so blurry that it almost looks like you put some seamless background paper behind it. Plus, you can use this lens on the camera handheld and get a fast-enough shutter speed to work in low light. You can see what you’re shooting, because it’s letting in twice as much light, and you can also stop the action because it allows you to use a shutter speed that’s half of what it would have been for most other lenses.” |
Gale took advantage of this F/2.0 maximum aperture in a photo of his daughter-in-law with her new baby (his first grandson). “I focused on my daughter-in-law’s eyelash in an attempt to create that type of selective focus,” he explains. “It was a nice effect, though I made sure you could still identify the baby in the background so he wasn’t too far out of focus.”
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Maynard, who usually likes to use a lot of light for macro photography so he can shoot up in the F/19-F/22 range, did a whole series with the 60mm of close-ups with all ambient light. “I shot at F/2 using that super-shallow depth of field to create that really artistic look,” he says. “The low-light capability of the lens is phenomenal. One thing worth noting, though, is that if you have a lens that can go to F/2.0, the quality of glass and light-gathering capability is much better. Therefore, even if you shoot at F/22, your overall quality is much better just based on your light-gathering abilities, so you’re getting better saturation and sharpness.” |
Light the Way |
Achieving even lighting for macro photography can be challenging, since it’s hard to position a lighting source when you’re up so close. Gale often uses a Metz macro flash attachment to assist in his macro lighting experiments. “This macro flash aims two little flash units just a few inches in front of the lens, so you can actually move in close to a bee or any bug, even ones just a couple of inches in front of you. That’s an advantage over longer lenses, where you’d be back a foot and a half or two feet just to get the same-size image, and your light would have to be back further, too.” |
For a picture of a yawning cat (a litter was born right in Gale’s backyard), he lit the feline from the side with a softbox. “It’s a radio trigger from the camera that’s firing the softbox,” he explains. “That’s pretty critical for this shot: Every time it would yawn, I thought it would be great to get the color in the inside of its mouth, but usually the light was coming down, so the mouth would be in the shadow of the nose. Using the softbox coming in from the left-hand side ensured light would get inside the mouth cavity. It also gave it a great, almost studio-portrait-light quality.”
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Gale used the same technique to take a shot of his grandson’s little toes. “That one was also done with the softbox coming in from the left-hand side,” he says. “I wanted to replicate window light. We don’t have a lot of window light here, because we’re more or less on the baby’s schedule as far as his cooperation goes.”
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For Maynard’s image of a tiny Cuban tree frog, which can be found in abundance near his Florida home, he used a ring flash. “I was literally holding onto the camera with my right hand and shooting the frog, who was sitting on the finger of my left hand,” he says.
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Both photographers also noticed the 60mm’s enhanced Broad-Band Anti-Reflection (BBAR) multi-layer coatings, designed to reduce flare and ghosting even more than previously possible. “I definitely noticed less flare,” says Gale. “The front element of this lens is not shrouded by any kind of recessed situation, with the glass right out front. You have that kind of exposed glass, and you’d think that any light that would hit it would create flare or a decrease in contrast or saturation, and it didn’t do that at all.” |
Maynard concurs: “I was shooting a bee pollinating a flower, and the flowering tree was well above my head. I actually looked up with the sun almost behind it and got no flare, so that anti-reflective coating must be working really well. I have yet to see any kind of lens flare with it.”
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The 60mm macro lens is also the ideal choice for other types of photography, says Gale. “People may forget that this lens is also perfectly good at infinity, or as a portrait lens,” he says. “If you shoot portraits with this lens at F/2.0, you’ll get background dropping out of focus amazingly fast. I’m sure it’s going to be a popular lens among wedding and event photographers, since you can shoot in low light and selectively focus on the people. It’s even a great focal length for shooting landscapes at infinity, since it’s so unbelievably sharp.” |
“I’m a freak about my lenses,” sums up Maynard. “I’m immersed in the world of photography both in my professional and personal life, and I’ve used a lot of gear. Glass is a very important thing for me, so as picky as I am, if it exceeds my expectations, Tamron’s obviously done something right!” |
For more of Don Gale’s work, go to www.photographybydon.com. For more of David Maynard’s work, go to www.dmaynardphotography.com. |
