I need advise concerning a lens selection for a Nikon D80

[jam4travel]

Photograph has been a hobby for me. I just recently registered with a few "stock photo" web site with the intention of trying to get my submissions selected and hopefully make a little extra money. One "stock photo" site has selected some of my submissions, however another site rejected all my submission, noise problems. I do not have a DSLR camera-which apparently is causing most of my problem. Thus, if I want to get better quality pictures, I will need to get a DSLR camera. I'm looking at a Nikon D80, but I'm not sure what lens to get. At this point I can only afford one lens in addition to the camera. So I need to get a lens that will initial meet my needs. Most all my stock photos will be taken of small objects (food items-no coins or jewelry) using light tents indoors (20" x 20"). Most shots will be taken within 12" to 24" of the object. I want to get high quality images. What lens would you recommend??

Also, what type of table top lighing system would you recommend and what brand of light tent would you recommended?

Any advise you can give me would be greatly appreciated!!!

Thanks,

jam4travel

 

[Big Mike]

Welcome to the forum.

You should be able to get clean images from film, you will need good quality scans and posibly some post processing to deal with the noise.

I'm not sure which 'Nikon' lens would best fit your needs, but as you would be shooting objects in a light tent, you should be using a tripod and therefore you shouldn't need to worry about a large maximum aperture. The standard kit lens (what ever that is) will probably do the job for you (without costing too much).

 

[Garbz]

Oh and forget using ISO400 Fujifilm. For top quality stock photography I would look towards some fine grain low speed film. There should still be some ISO50-75 films out there. Definitely better than buying a whole new camera just to deal with a minor problem. Unless that is you're looking for an excuse to go digital

As for the lens I'm not sure of any recent zoom lenses with macro capability. I would personally what a proper macro for this but that makes the camera very limited if this is your only lens. Maybe an old Nikkor 28-105mm f/3.5-5.6 Macro would suit your needs. Mind you it was designed for film which means 28mm just doesn't cut it on the wide angle side of things.