Macro Work

A friend of mine is letting me use his Nikon D300, a brand new Nikon AF-S VR Micro 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED along with the Nikon Close-up Speedlight Remote Kit R1. Basically this set up looks like the camera and flash they use on Miami CSI at a crime scene. The 105mm lens is legendary for its sharpness and macro, (Nikon calls it micro), capability.
After looking over the instructions, tweaking a few things in the D300 menu, I slapped the lens on the camera, put the ring and the flashes on the front of the lens and set the pop up flash as a commander. The two flashes were set to "TTL". That is Nikon's jibberish for letting the camera decide the flash exposure based on what it sees "through the lens". I use aperture priority so I can set an adequate depth of field. (In this case, f8). The camera does the rest. It just works.
And, this is hand held which is tricky because of how close the lens is to the subject and the magnification.  The VR makes this possible.
I'm going to have fun with this stuff.  Watch for more.