Marco photograph and wildlife photography have a few things in common; bulky heavy lenses, narrow depth of field, and the need to hold the lens very steady while photographing the subject preferably with the use of a tripod, and they are expensive. Fuji's R LM OIS WR macro and wildlife lenses are over $1000.
I had fun exploring the dried leaves and insects in my backyard with the Fujinon XF80mmF2.8 R LM OIS WR macro lens that I rented for the weekend. The optical image stabilisation (OIS) was handy for the handheld focus-stacked images of Camilla's face.



Submitted for the 100DaysToOffload project and Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #111.
Excellent.
Thank you, John.
Hi, Khurt. Wow. That first image is spectacular. I also love your leaf shot. The color and texture are wonderful. I was debating whether I could afford the Fuji macro, but ended up buying the one made by Laowa. It's a manual lens, but I've been impressed by the quality of the images. Glad you joined the challenge!
Thank you, Patti. I was lucky that my model sat quietly. ?
I did not know about the Laowa. I'll see if I can rent a copy. I have no fear of manual focus.
It was my first manual lens, so it's taking a bit of learning, but I love the clarity and image quality. The B & H Photo site has some detailed reviews if you want to take a look.
Here's the link:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1542830-REG/venus_optics_ve6528se_laowa_65mm_f_2_8_2x.html?c3api=0980%2C255933575700&gclid=CjwKCAjwyo36BRAXEiwA24CwGQsT1Px5ktrs0RrXWXQ9-z7sbFYTNNxqdT3bvkWsLZS_8HiCUGSOhBoCXdgQAvD_BwE
$400! Wow! That's 1⁄3 the price of the XF80mmF2.8 R LM WR OIS.
The price is great, isn't it? And the quality.
Isn't that great??
Hi, Khurt. I'm not sure my reply went through. But here's a link to the B & H Photo site with some detailed reviews of the Laowa if you want to read more:https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1542830-REG/venus_optics_ve6528se_laowa_65mm_f_2_8_2x.html?c3api=0980%2C255933575700&gclid=CjwKCAjwyo36BRAXEiwA24CwGQsT1Px5ktrs0RrXWXQ9-z7sbFYTNNxqdT3bvkWsLZS_8HiCUGSOhBoCXdgQAvD_BwE
I got both replies. Thank you for the links, Patti.
I can see your images perfectly Khurt. That cat close-up is incredible. Lovely choices for the challenge.
Thank you, Tina. Camilla (and by proxy my daughter) was headed back to college this week but as of Sunday night, she may be with us until next Spring.
Sigh, so many are so impacted by this Khurt. Feel especially bad for the college kids. Should be such a special time for them.
I've noticed on your posts lately that there are no images, just image data such as "Sunday 23 August, 2020 | Day 154 | FujiFilm X-T2 | XF80mmF2.8 R LM OIS WR Macro".
You are the second person to say that. It's odd that I see images but you don't.
I'll keep looking. That's been the case for a while. I thought you were just writing and not posting images.
Thanks. I'm going to remov and re-install JetPack.
I cleared JetPack. Hopefully that fixed things.