Which camera (lens) for outstanding flower photography?

Which camera and which lens do you need for outstanding flower and floral photography? This question is number one from all my students and florists that are interested in photographing their own unique floral arrangements.

The simple answer is: “the best camera system and lenses you can get”. For sure that’s a medium format digital camera; It offers the best color quality and ultimate sharpness and detail. But for most photographers and florists that camera system is to complicated to handle and far to expensive to buy.
But luckily, with most modern DSLR and system camera’s you can get terrific results which will blow you off your feet. Even with a smartphone you can make nice photo’s when you know how to handle all the hidden features and use the nice apps like Snapseed to enhance the results.

Canon, Pentax, Sony, Fuji, Nikon and others are all good choices. For my floral photography I use a Mamiya-Leaf medium format; it ensures me ultimate color quality and very high detail and sharpness, needed for high standard prints in books and magazines. I’m also familiar with Nikon. Nikon has a nice line-up of camera’s starting with the D3400.

More important is not which camera but which lens do you need to use!

You can choose for the standard lens provided with the camera; but in general that’s not the best choice. If you have the budget I would suggest the Nikon AF-S 60mm f/2.8G ED. The lens is suitable for both overall and detail shots. Because it is a macro lens you can make very nice details of your floral arrangement, for example the stems or the little leaves. Detail shots are informative and popular; a nice and useful addition on your website of Facebook. More about which camera to use you will learn in my floral and flower photography tutorials.