Colorado Macro Photos – Flowers and Bugs

Hooray!  My new Macro lens arrived this week and I finally had a chance to give it a proper testing.  The lens is a Tonkina 100mm 2.8 Macro.  For the most part I'm quite pleased with it's performance.  The manual focus is very easy to work with and easily jumps from manual to auto focus with a push/pull of the focus lens focus ring.  Unless you are using the lens for purposes other than macro (for example as a portrait lens), you will not be worrying about auto focus to begin with as auto focus in Macro simply gives up too much control (plus it spends way too much time searching).  Sadly this Tonkina lens has no vibration reduction system.  This would have been useful as I was forced to push my ISO higher than what I would have preferred in an effort to deal with camera shake caused by the shutter (even with the mirror locked up).

Anyway,, on to the photos.  They were all taken in full mid-day sunlight at the South Valley Park near Ken Caryl.  Some of the photos were taken directly in the sunlight, while others I used a diffusion tent with a hand held reflector to help deal with the harsh light.