I've been thinking about putting together a flash rig for macro photography and was thinking about using two AF400FTZ's with my DS. At the moment I've got one of those, plus a couple of off-camera cords and the hotshoe adaptor. I was thinking about getting another hotshoe adaptor and a 2nd AF400FTZ via Ebay and I was wondering if this would work, and particularily if it'll work in TTL mode.

I was thinking about stacking the adaptors - one per flash - and connecting both the flashes in TTL mode using the off-camera cables.

Regards
Steve

That does seem an exceptional (even unlikely) price for someone to pay for an ME Super, however it's not the first time I've seen one of that sellers auctions do well. A week or so back an FA 28-200 went for something like £150+ which surprised me.

That seller does tend to be auctioning items in particularily good condition plus the presentation of the listing is also very good. Over £100 for an ME Super still seems insane though.

After seeing Liam's photos I decided to try my Vivitar 55mm macro plus the extension tubes to see what sort of magnification I could get:










All taken handheld @ ISO 200 with a single studio flash head for lighting.

With the macro lens at 1:1 plus the tubes the subject was just about touching the filter ring of the lens. That made lighting difficult so the lens was angled to let some light in, which means not all of the subject is sharply in focus.

For digital I'd probably go with the 50mm, and with film my preference would be the 100mm lens.

I'd always expect a decent prime to be sharper than a cheap consumer zoom. The only way your 55mm F1.8 wouldn't outperform the 18-55 would be if it was broken!

I picked up one of the manual focus 55mm Vivitar macro lenses for under £30 on Ebay. I've been impressed by the results using it with my DS:




It seems to be the case that pretty much all proper (i.e. prime) macro lenses are optically pretty good.

The SMC-M 50mm F1.7 is a nice little lens and very, very sharp. I compared one to the 18-55@50mm - even at F1.7 the old prime is already sharper than the 18-55 at any aperture. In the UK market £36 would be regarded as expensive for one though as you could probably get two SMC-M 50mm F1.7's for that.

If you're on the lookout for a good value 24mm prime then don't overlook the old Tamron Adaptall 24mm F2.5 - I used to have one of those and it was a very good performer. Wider than that the 19mm Vivitar is very cheap but it needs stopping down a lot it otherwise can vignette badly at wider apertures.

Unless you're very anti-primes then another wide lens to look out for is the Tokina ATX-Pro 20-35mm F2.8. It's an AF lens but it's similar to the FA* Pentax lenses in having a proper sized focus ring that has specific AF & MF modes. That plus the fast & constant aperture makes it work well as a manual focus lens.

I've got both the A and M versions of the 50mm F1.7 and I find them exceptionally useful lenses. I also own an SMC-M 50mm F1.4 so I've had the opportunity to compare them. The F1.4 has the advantage of a little extra speed, however where the aperture ranges overlap there is nothing in it performance wise, and the F1.7 has the advantage of being much cheaper.

On the digital bodies the M and A lenses both work but having the A is an advantage as it works in all exposure and metering modes. I recently bought the SMC-A 50mm F1.7 via Ebay and it only cost £14, which is great value.

When getting zooms the situation is more complicated as many of the entry lenses aren't great, especially wide open and for corner sharpness. My recommendation for an auto-focus short zoom would be the 28-70 F4 which is a good balance of sharpness & speed v size and weight. If you're willing to go a bit bigger and heavier (and more expensive) then the Tokina ATX-Pro 28-70 F2.6-2.8 is a very good lens. All the 28-70 (or 28-80 etc) that I've tried with maximum apertures of F5.6 at the long end have dissapointed, including the Pentax badged ones.

Regards
Steve

I used to own one of the Vivitar 19mm F3.8 primes and I wrote a review on it which is available here: http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/1837/viv19rev.html. Mine suffered badly from light fall-off in the corners, however that should be less of an issue on a DSLR.

At under £200 there are several options. The Vivitar/Cosina/Pheonix 19-35mm zooms are optically decent enough and can be had very cheap - the build quality doesn't inspire confidence however mine is surprisingly unmarked after years of use. I've also seen a Tokina 19-35mm sell cheap on Ebay recently.

I've also seen the Sigma 15-30mm EX for sale in the States for under £150 on Ebay - including shipping etc. that could still be around the price you mentioned and it's supposed to be a very decent lens.

A lot of folks recommend white polystyrene tiles for reflectors - that can be a cheap way of putting together something large and effective.