I mentioned previously about wanting to try out Macro photography, but being reluctant to spend serious money on a good lens. Well, I think I’ve found my interim solution.
Previous experiments with my Tamron 55-200 left me cold. I felt it was too soft to achieve what I wanted and to be honest it never seemed like “macro” just “really close up”.
I then tried a reversal ring, which mounts your typical lens backwards for some crazy close up action. Whilst impressive, you were left using the default aperture of the lens and typically the depth of field was razor thin. Good fun though, and at £10 worth a play.
But now…
Following on from that experiment, I picked up an (ebay special) set of close up filters. In my case I got a set of 4 different filters (+1, +2, +4 and +10) in a neat little leather case for £8.99 (including postage). Like the reversal ring, they’re available in a number of different thread sizes.
Not, lets be honest. They’re not world class filters. They’re cheap and cheerful. They’re soft at times but they are good fun. And more importantly, they give good picture. The eye picture from a few weeks back was made using them.
They have a few advantages over the reversal ring.
- Because the lens is mounted normally, you have access to all your functions as normal
- You can mount one or more of the filters in combination to take you right up to +17 which is….. close
- They’re fast to mount and unmount and you’ve no risk of messing up the internals of your camera or lens
Hopefully these photos show the sort of effects you can expect.
Normal – 50mm
(f/2.5, 1/4000sec, 50mm, ISO=200, 07/06/2008)
50mm with +10 filter
(f/16, 1/125sec, 50mm, ISO=200, 07/06/2008)
50mm with +10, +4, +2, +1 filters
(f/13, 1/200sec, 50mm, ISO=200, 07/06/2008)
As you can (hopefully) see, it is possible to get right into the object in question.
All in all, great fun to play with and something that will become part of my kit bag for the foreseeable.
The only question remains, what would happen if you put a close up filter on a macro lens…
You can read the first two parts of Macro on a budget here and here.
"The only question remains, what would happen if you put a close up filter on a macro lens…"
You would lose some of the optical quality that you paid mucho mula for. I’ve been using an extension tube recently and it is possible to get impressively close (not a close as a reversal ring mind).
Nice flower subjects you have there. A tip for your next shoot is to get a bit of reflective card to banish the shadows.