What to buy for macro and portraits? (D5100) [duplicate]

Question

This question already has an answer here:

• What Nikon lens for both macro and portrait? 3 answers

I have a Nikon D5100 with the 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens.

I am an amateur interested in: 1. macro - insects, flowers, objects. 2. portraits- love blurry backgrounds, focused and unfocused body parts. 3. occasional landscapes

To avoid buying an expensive macro lens, should i buy filters, reversing ring, extension tube for macro?

I dont like the portraits I got with kit lens. Any suggestions, or must I buy a new lens? And would any of the above options improve portraits?

Answer 1

About macro: I used everyone of them, including a macro lens a friend borrowed me and in the end my favorite solutions are:

• A close-up filter (but a good one with multiple elements, like the Canon 500D close up filter) for portability - it's one less lens to carry around, is extremely light and mounted on even a kit telephoto zoom it gives wonderful results with a good working distance. Bad side: cost as the cheap ones are of terrible quality. This was taken with the close-up and no flash, if I remember correctly: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcomp/7529094508/in/photostream

  • Reversal ring: hard to use but very big magnification. Using it I took this one (embedded flash): http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcomp/8027612482/in/photostream

The bad side of both is convenience - be ready to focus manually and in the case of the ring also expose manually. If you prefer AF and AE, go the dedicated macro lens route.

Answer 2

Why don't you like the portraits from your kit lens? you should take a long hard look at your pictures and decide exactly what it is you want to improve.

Then you should try to solve the problem without getting a new lens - if you ask here how to do something specific with your kit lens you will probably get a good answer.

Only when you are sure it's a lens limit you buy a new lens - or lighting equipment or whatever you need.

A portrait is mostly about posing and lighting, it's unlikely a new lens will automatically improve your portraits (on the other hand new techniques tend to offer immediate improvements)

And about the macro (that should really be a different questions) a real macro lens is best, the filters are pretty bad and extension tubes and reversal rings are both good, I would get a cheap extension tube set to experiment with but a reversal ring will also do the job (I'm just a little nervous about exposing the back element of my lens, but that's just me)