I have always done my insect macro photography on my Micro Four Thirds setup, and this was perhaps the first time I did any serious insect macro on full frame. Futuromic Malaysia (official distributor for Tamron and Nikon in Malaysia) approached me and asked if I was interested to test the new Tamron 90mm F2.8 III Macro lens. They were being really generous; they offered for me to just take the lens and do anything I wanted with no strings attached. If I have some good shots, I was asked to share with them to be used on their socials, which was perfectly fine. I have the Tamron 90mm F2.8 III Macro with me for a several weeks, I am still in the midst of shooting with the lens, but I thought I'd share some images I have taken with it here, and some initial thoughts.
Obviously, this is not a review of the Tamron 90mm F2.8 III Macro. I merely brought the lens out and had some fun shooting some little creatures. I am sharing my experience having used the lens for insect photography, and plenty of sample images.
The last thing left to account for was a flash diffusion technique. Special thanks to Emilie Talpin who sent me her AK Diffuser all the way from the US, this was also the first time I used the AK diffuser for my macro shooting.
For my Micro Four Thirds setup, I usually hold the camera and macro lens with my right hand, single-handedly, while I hold the flash with a small softbox mounted on my left hand. The flash, diffused through the softbox, is fired wirelessly off camera. This single hand technique works very well and I have used them for more than 10 years. I like the flexibility of being able to move my light around, placing the light from below the leave, or to the far opposite side, if I want to, and this versatility of changing light directions helps me to achieve some really impossible, yet incredible shots. The camera and lens from the Micro Four Thirds setup (eg E-M1 Mark II and 60mm F2.8 Macro) are usually so light, I can handle them single-handedly with no issue.
However, I cannot apply the same macro shooting technique with the Nikon Z5 and Tamron 90mm macro lens. The lens itself weighs more than 600g, and the camera alone is another 675g. There is no way I can hold 1.3kg comfortably for a long period of time singe-handedly. Therefore, I needed to improvise and change my shooting method with the Tamron 90mm Macro lens for this session. Instead of firing the flash off camera wirelessly, I opted for the flash to be mounted on and fired on camera. Adding the flash (500g) and AK diffuser to the setup easily blew up the weight to above 2Kg, so I have to use both hands to hold this set up at all times.
It takes some getting used to the heavier weight, but it was not too bad at all. I have to say, after 3 hours of intense macro shooting, I do miss the lighter and simpler Micro Four Thirds setup.
The Tamron 90mm F2.8 III Macro surprised me in several ways.
I did not expect the autofocus performance of the lens to be so good. While mounted on the Nikon Z5, I used AFC with full AF area activated, and let the camera and lens decide where to focus. Unexpectedly, the camera managed to find the face and eye of the insects that I was shooting most of the time. I'd say the AF accuracy when left to AFC + full wide area was about 50% chance, which was incredibly high for extreme close up macro shooting. If you miss one shot, just shoot another, and another, and another, and chances of getting the eye in critically sharp focus was higher than I thought possible. This was a surprise, and I have decided to just let the camera and lens do the grunt of the AF work, and I only interfered in some complex situations (eg more than 1 insect in frame, so I have to manually select the focusing on the right insect, or shooting through gaps of leaves in the foreground). I have to admit, the AF performance of the Tamron 90mm F2.8 III Macro blows what Olympus 60mm F2.8 Macro on the OM-1 can do out of water.
Image quality wise, I was very happy with what the Tamron 90mm F2.8 III Macro can do. Images come out tack sharp, full of fine details and excellent contrast. There is the sense of realism when I look at the images rendered with this lens, and overall the insects appeared realistic in the images. There is a reason why the original Tamron 90mm Macro was such a legendary lens, and they continue to do so well in their latest Mark III version. You can see the many samples I show here, the results speak for itself.
If you are a full frame (Sony and Nikon) shooter, and you want a capable macro lens that can do 1:1 real life reproduction ratio, I highly recommend you check out the Tamron 90mm F2.8 III macro.
