Having covered the general first steps in macro-photography in out last blog, and assuming the results made you want to go further with your macro-photos, we continue with part II.

The next-step after close-up accessory lenses is to purchase a good, dedicated close-up lens.

Nikon calls their lenses “Micro” and others call them “Macro, but in this instance it’s all the same. The Nikon 105-micro is one of the sharpest-lenses I’ve ever owned, it’ll reveal all of the hairs on that fuzzy-spider that just plopped down next to you as you got into bed.

When you put your money down for a “micromacro” lens, make sure you know what the actual reproduction ratio is for the lens (1:2, 1:1 etc). It’s usually stamped on the lens, but beware because there are many lenses out there (usually not the ones made by the big camera manufacturers) that say they’re “Macro” but can’t really deliver anything closer than maybe 1:8 life size, which in a picture will make your fly look more like a flea. Yes, at least you could see it in the picture (unlike a normal lens) but it’s still pretty discouraging.

Beyond that, there are bellows and extension tubes (which are basically fix-length bellows). These go behind your lens and give you even greater magnification ratios.
The Kenko Auto-extension tube set works great, and they continue to allow for auto-focus and auto-exposure coupling of the lens to the camera, something many of the camera-manufacturers extension rings don’t (you have to shoot in manual-exposure mode).

While auto-focus in macro-mode is kind of hit & miss, I’ve had pretty good success with these on my D1x, and my D70 when taking photos of bigger spiders and bugs. If you set it to spot-exposure, and center the focus-zone, it seems to work well.
Bellows can get you in close enough to see not only the hairs on the spider, but also the flea-sized bug he’s eating for lunch. Way cool. Nikon of course makes some nice bellows, as do the other manufacturers.
Novoflex makes some awesome macro products, while they aren’t inexpensive, if you’re seriously enjoying macro-photography, they’re worth a look.
I’ve used my Nikon bellows to take a shot of what I thought was a tiny black-fly (about an 1/8″ in length) only to find out when I put the photos up on my computer-screen, it was really a moth. Too cool. (…and no moth-balls jokes, please).
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Next blog: Lighting , Tripods, and focusing rails…oh my.