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My last camera just died, close to 60k photos with it. It was a point-and-shoot, Nikon Coolpix L100 and the only specialty thing I did with it was to take super close macro shots of insects (reposted pic fully related).
I'm in the market for a new camera, but I'm no longer going with a point-and-shoot. I need a camera and one good macro lens. While on /an/, earlier this year, discussing insect macro shots, I was told this by an anon who does amazing insect macro work,
>A Canon Eos 7D with the Tokina 100mm macro. For these high magnification shots I also have a set of (cheap) extension tubes. Lighting is a ring flash with a homemade diffuser (literally just a clear plastic box with white paper inside).
>If you use any kind of system camera use extension tubes and not magnification lenses for more magnification. Those just put awful, cheap glass in front of your good lens.
That Cannon BTFO my budget ($700), but that Tokina lens is within my range. That would mean nearly $400 for lens and $300 left over for camera. Not exactly out of point-and-shoot range. Though, that lens goes well with Nikon AF-based cameras, but would be f/5.6 at 1:1 for macro which is fine for what I want to do.
After searching forever, I found, "Nikon - D3400 DSLR Camera with AF-P DX NIKKOR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR Lens" for $499. I've been googling and reading and more reading and I'm fucking cross eyed and brain dead now. I figure I'll digest all this info for another week before making any decisions. I thought, I'd at least run this by you guys since I'm sure I've made some critical mistake somewhere that's easy to spot.