Macro / close-up lens sets

[RobinP]

I've noticed these on that popular auction site, they seem very cheap and just screw onto your existing lens. They come in sets of four, x1, x2, x3/4 and x10 (macro). Are they just a poor substitute for a decent lens and do they render A/F unusable?

[wildlifesnapper]

Hi

I used a 10x one years ago and it was shocking. You'd be better off with a standard lens and extension tubes.

neil

[mh68]

Hi Robin, the cheapo closeup filters really arent worth the bother,especially the higher strength ones.Chromatic abberation can be a nightmare with them, and you rapidly lose image quality away from the centre of the image.
If you want to go this route, look at the Nikon 4T and 5T,the Canon closeup filters, and Sigma achromatic closeup filters, these are constructed of several glass elements and give much better image quality.All these filters do, is reduce your lens` minimum focus distance, which varies depending on the strength of the closeup filter.The better quality ones, such as those mentioned above, dont degrade image quality very much and give good results.
For the Nikon closeup lenses, you`d have to buy from the States, while the Sigma can often be found on Ebay. Not sure about the Canons. Theyre a bit pricier than the Ebay cheapos, but its still a lot cheaper than a dedicated macro lens.

Mark H

[RobinP]

Thanks, I can't find the Nikon or Sigma ones anywhere so I'm trying a Hoya version, sounds like reasonable quality, only 45 notes (sob!). it can always go on E b a y if no good.

[SteveF48]

The biggest problem with them is depth of field.
I used a 4x one with my film camera and the depth of field was about 4mm at the 100mm end of my zoom. A 10x will be even less.
I bought a proper (Tamron 90mm) macro lens for my Samsung GX10 and depth of field on that is only 1mm, however once you get used to it the results are amazing.

[Leif]

Originally Posted by mh68

If you want to go this route, look at the Nikon 4T and 5T,the Canon closeup filters, and Sigma achromatic closeup filters, these are constructed of several glass elements and give much better image quality.

I can but agree. Do not touch most other brands. Unfortunately the Nikon lenses are no longer made. I got mine from Grays of Westminster and they might have some left. Otherwise try ebay for used examples.

£45 sounds a lot for a Hoya.

[RobinP]

About the cheapest I could find, £40+ seems the going rate.

[denisg]

Robin, close-up-LENSES are exactly that and should in no way be confused with filters, they just fit a filter thread. They are also better known as cul's.

Cul's are a great way to get into this type of photography but a lot of the above comments are also true. The Nikon and Canon ones lead the way by miles although they are around £100 apiece if you can find them. A Hoya at £45 'ish is either a very large diameter or a 10 dioptre. If it's a 10 you are looking at, forget it. You will classify all cul's by the performance of it and that would be grossly unfair. The 10 dioptre is not a good performer.

If at £45 you are talking about a package of 4, forget it. They are cheap and nasty and often the glass loosens in the mount very quickly. The above comments regarding ca and out-of-focus edges are very true with these.

I would suggest that you look at the least for Hoya individuals and start with a 3 dioptre (+3). The £45 though could also buy you a B+W +3 and although a single element they are superb quality in use and build. B+W are a manufacturer.

Cul's do not absorb any noticeable amount of light and therefor have no effect on autofocus. Extention tubes do though, and if used with say a kit lens of f6.3 or so, it is highly likely that AF will tend to hunt more or not work at all. Also bear in mind that light loss with tubes does not give an increased dof, quite the opposite in fact as with all tools that move your lens closer to the subject. With tubes, like cul's, do yourself a favour and stay away from the very cheapest such as Jessops. Used individually they will probably be fine but used in combinations may result in occasional "Lens not fitted" errors.

Cul's can give you a great in-route to macro photography but be very carefull, it is seriously addictive and the next step would be possibly The Tammy 90mm macro lens Steve mentions above (my choice too!) and then you will be in a different ball park. Don't say you weren't warned...........

Denis.

[mh68]

Re the Sigma achromat filters. I`ve seen quite a few on Ebay pretty cheap, you just have to be patient until one turns up. The first one I bought I paid £15 inc. P+P for it, the second came as a freebie with a Sigma zoom.Most of those i`ve seen have been going for around the £15-25 mark.Even if you get an alternative lens in the mean time, its worth snapping up a Sigma if you ever see one at a good price.
The only powerful closeup lens/filter worth considering would be the raynox dcr-250, this is a +8 dioptre, but the working distance on a DSLR/zoom lens setup would be very short indeed,probably down to about 1-2 inches. Ive used the +4 dioptre raynox dcr-150 on my old Sigma 70-300, and it`ll give over 1:1 magnification, but even with this the working distance was around 4 inches from the front of the lens. Image quality wasnt far off that of a proper macro lens though.Both of these come with a clip-on adaptor that fits to the filter threads on the front of the camera`s lens.
The setup i`m using now, a Sigma achromat on a Canon 90-300EF, gives around a 1:1 magnification at a distance of about 18" at full zoom,very handy for skittish subjects.

Mark H

[denisg]

Good post Mark. I think I should add that the only reason I didn't mention the Sigma and Raynox items is simply no direct personal experience of them.

Couple of other points here. The close-up items mentioned here can, of course, be used on the macro lenses too.

Secondly, and mainly for users of pro-sumer or 'Bridge' cameras, if you use a screw-on type telecon such as the Olympus Tcon 17 or similar Raynox ones the standard type culs such as the Sigma (possibly?), Hoya or B+W can be used between the lens and telecon. In macro mode, this gives greater working distance, in standard camera mode it reduces the minimum focus distance. All with little or no light loss.

Denis.

[mh68]

Originally Posted by denisg

Good post Mark. I think I should add that the only reason I didn't mention the Sigma and Raynox items is simply no direct personal experience of them.

Couple of other points here. The close-up items mentioned here can, of course, be used on the macro lenses too.

Secondly, and mainly for users of pro-sumer or 'Bridge' cameras, if you use a screw-on type telecon such as the Olympus Tcon 17 or similar Raynox ones the standard type culs such as the Sigma (possibly?), Hoya or B+W can be used between the lens and telecon. In macro mode, this gives greater working distance, in standard camera mode it reduces the minimum focus distance. All with little or no light loss.

Denis.

When I was still using my old FZ20 bridge camera, I tried the Sigma achromat between the camera and a Raynox 1.54x teleconverter - great working distance, but the image quality did degrade a bit,especially towards the edges. As a last resort for really skittish subjects then the combo is worth using, but I gave it up very quickly preferring a stealthy approach with just the achromat lens, or the raynox,or even just the camera lens alone at 3x zoom,getting to within 3 or 4 cm of dragonflies
Another advantage of using a closeup filter as opposed to extension tubes, is that it can be quickly attached/detached without actually removing the lens.
The only disadvantage is that working distance is pretty specific,the Sigma has about 8" of latitude, too far away, or too close and you wont get focus.

Mark H

[Hobjob]

I use a set, but seldom nothing other than the x2.
Mainly flowes and insects.
Usually with 100-400 L zoom.
Means I am far further away than most of the proper
macro users - so insects less jumpy.

It is a Hoya.

Yes there is a bit of vignetting, but with macro (insects)
you are really only interested in the centre of the picture.
Rule of thirds seems irrelevant.

CS£ can remove most of the distortion for you but I have yet
to bother.

Biggest problem in use for me is getting the distance to
object correct. I tend to use a monopod.
Tripod with horizonatal movement would be better, but
I have yet to go to the effort.

[mh68]

Originally Posted by Hobjob

Biggest problem in use for me is getting the distance to
object correct. I tend to use a monopod.
Tripod with horizonatal movement would be better, but
I have yet to go to the effort.

Using a tripod on 2 legs instead of 3 works well Hobjob, more stable than a monopod but still allows you to rock the camera forwards/backwards to achieve the correct focus distance

Mark H

[RobinP]

Thanks for all the replies, folks, I've learned a lot in the past few days. The Raynox DCR 250 system looks good and I like the idea of the clip on lens, also the B+W and Hoya screw on lenses seem good quality and readily available. I can probably simulate the +3 with the lenses I've got so I will try a +10 diopter and see if I can get reasonable results.

At the end of the day I only want it to experiment with super close-ups of plants and insects, I'm not a pro so if it is not perfect I won't worry too much. Now all I need is an accomodating insect or two to try it on

[birding dave]

Originally Posted by SteveF48

The biggest problem with them is depth of field.
I used a 4x one with my film camera and the depth of field was about 4mm at the 100mm end of my zoom. A 10x will be even less.
.

Depth of field is related to magnification, so it is not simply the supplementary lens that is at fault. You will get equally small dof with a macro lens at the same magnification and aperture.

Supplementary lenses are a useful and relatively cheap way of getting close, but as has been said here, you need to buy high quality ones. I've got some superb images with a +4 on a 120 Makro Planar fitted to a Rollei 6006.

[Leif]

Originally Posted by denisg

The Nikon and Canon ones lead the way by miles although they are around £100 apiece if you can find them.

I paid about £40 for a new Nikon 3T (52mm thread) about 2 years ago. I see them on photo forums used, sometimes for okay prices e.g. £50 for 2. The problem is that they can go for a lot of money, but not always. I also bought a used one for £30 on ebay but the lenses had come apart, and the seller apologised profusely and refunded all costs.

[SteveF48]

Depth of field is also related to sensor size, as I found when I started using a DSLR.
Bridge and compact cameras have such small sensors that depth of field is huge even when wide open, but SLRs have much less depth of field.
I used to achieve excellent results with my Fuji S7000, which has two levels of macro. Normal macro has a range of 10cm to 80cm, super macro from 1cm to 20cm.
In super macro mode I was almost touching the insect, but they often remained for several shots.

[denisg]

Originally Posted by SteveF48

Depth of field is also related to sensor size, as I found when I started using a DSLR.
Bridge and compact cameras have such small sensors that depth of field is huge even when wide open, but SLRs have much less depth of field.
I used to achieve excellent results with my Fuji S7000, which has two levels of macro. Normal macro has a range of 10cm to 80cm, super macro from 1cm to 20cm.
In super macro mode I was almost touching the insect, but they often remained for several shots.

So very true. Bridge/Prosumer cameras are a superb way into macro imho, but boy do you realise the difference when you "upgrade" to dslr!!. That lack of dof means small apertures and needs more light. Not easy in the UK, using hand held and ambient. Thank heavens for plastic milk cartons.

Which gives me a thought, anyone using 4/3 camera for macro and how are you finding the dof with these??, marginally better than aps-c dslrs?

Denis.

[jhewitt15]

I can't afford a fancy giant macro lens so I got one of the cheap ones. It is 0.4x and it is AMAZING!

It has greatly improved my macro photography of english orchids.
eg dark red helleborine.





If you don't own a DSLR, I would recommend a cheap screw on lens,

[cyber_spud]

I wish I had looked at this topic before buying cheap close-up filters from eBay!

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a set of 72mm for my Sigma 70-300 lens and a set of 58mm for the Sigma 17-70 lens. They were a good price (£35 for both sets incl shipping) so at least I haven't wasted too much! Mind you, I have taken a few test shots with the 58mm set and the results seemed quite good... I have now bought a 58mm Sigma achromatic filter from eBay for £13.50 incl shipping, which seemed a good price. When it arrives, I shall do some comparison shots and post them up here so that you can all check out the difference in quality.

[ceterach]

Originally Posted by RobinP

Thanks for all the replies, folks, I've learned a lot in the past few days. The Raynox DCR 250 system looks good and I like the idea of the clip on lens, also the B+W and Hoya screw on lenses seem good quality and readily available. I can probably simulate the +3 with the lenses I've got so I will try a +10 diopter and see if I can get reasonable results.

At the end of the day I only want it to experiment with super close-ups of plants and insects, I'm not a pro so if it is not perfect I won't worry too much. Now all I need is an accomodating insect or two to try it on

Robin

I have only just seen this thread and thought I would add my two-penny worth. I have used the DCR150 (4.8 diopter) quite a lot on my Panny FZ30, the results are quite pleasing, see below.


The clip on facility is handy but the lens has quite a small diameter and so vignettes at higher zoom.

Much better for me is the Olympus Mcon40 (slightly lower magnification) which is a 55mm screw on and is a heavy bit of glass and excellent quality. The picture below was taken with that (ignore the bit of grass)


The important thing about both these lenses is that they are fixed focal length (I think that is the right term), i.e you focus at a fixed distance and then use the camera zoom to increase magnification. I can't remember the exact distances but for the 150 it is about 6in and for the Mcon about 10in. Much better than using the macro facility on the camera where you have to get down to a couple of inches for about the same result.

Somewhere on the web is a superb page showing a comprehensive comparison of the properties of all the add-on macro lenses but for the life of me I can't find it at the moment. If I do I will post it.

All the best