It's awesome that you put this up here! We have been looking at cameras for the last week or so. Going to step our game up from the smartphone camera. We have been looking at the nikon d3200 or d3300. Beautiful pictures btw.
Hey Nis ... check out the D3400 on Amazon .. very similar to your choices listed and its in the top 10 DSLR all of the others are MUCH more expensive. I bought 1 after an exhausting rundown. When I wanna spend some coin on stuff, I seem to want to obsess on it for days.... Warning lens are addictive.
There's a kit with a 18-55 and a 70-300mm lens. Both take really good macro shots - the longer lens is best used with a mono/tripod. I use a mono pod just cause I'm too lazy and have a short attention span. Setting up the tripod is well more work.
I bought a cheapo macro lens that takes some GREAT close ups.
Opteka 15mm f/4 LD UNC AL 1:1 Macro Wide Angle Full Frame Lens.
All manual with the Nikon but wow I can really get close 1:1 @ about 4" or so almost right on top of the subject... sometimes thats not the best way but for flowers it works great. Moving subjects not so much. I really got into taking macro shots with a Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G that I also bought extra... not a lot of $$ but it's really my all around go-to lens I like a lot very versatile.
Cropping really is where the money shots come from. With a good camera and lens you can take a regular normal pic and crop it down really tight ... when doing this you will see whats what really. If keeper you can crop down REAL close with everything still in focus.
I forget who taught me that, someone here for sure... zoom way in, if its still in focus = keeper. Then work on editing. If it's not in focus up close then the picture is really not worth a lot of extra effort. Sows ear / race horse thing.
I'll post some pics of macro shots but I didn't drill down to the trichome level ... I have a bunch but still waiting for the migration to take place so I can get at my pics prior to "grande update-e" All good.
I took these pics to post to my journal so nothing really up close enough to see trichomes. I do have a bunch of those just not uploaded yet. This is how I "see" when its ready for harvest. All these plants are >= 30 days in flower so I'm not getting in there just yet! @ 40 days I will start looking real close. I have a few fast finishers this round...
Dolato #2 - side buds close up... can see purps starting to show. This could end up being a purple pheno which of course everyone likes. Red is the new purps I'm thinking.... or maybe black is the new purps. Not sure..
Buffalato #2 - Side bud, not even 30 days flower time... I looked close at this one and there are purple trichomes on the sugars... too bad, gonna be some sweet ass freezer hash me thinks.
Buffalato #1 - side bud >30 days flower. No purps trichomes on this one but she's getting cheesy.
Buffalato #2 - another side bud.
Subbing up to this thread - great job. This is really how I figure out whats getting close to harvest. I thought I was some sort of freak... didn't know y'all were doing macro as a tool to ripeness.
Props to the OP! 
