10x Filter

In Fathers Day gift ideas, I made reference to a "ghetto macro". Today Ill show you just what I mean and why spending $15 is worth it.  

Close up lenses are also called "diopters" and sometimes "macro filters."  They vary in quality and of course price.  Functionally they are the same as reading glasses.  Practically, they allow you to get closer, MUCH closer, to your subject.  Why then would anyone spend the insane dollars on a "real" macro lens?  As always, there are tradeoffs.  The first and most obvious is the extremely small focus area.  You can forget about trying to frame a nice "rule of thirds" shot in camera - its center focus time.  Second, your depth of field is measured in millimeters.  Finally, focus is more about moving the camera than turing the dial so tripod work is probably out too.  This is a bright light tool!  Despite all of that, you can get some AMAZING results with a little practice and a lot of shooting.  Enough talk.

The pictures:

This was shot using a 200mm zoom, all the way zoomed at the minimum distance.

This is the same daisy with a 10x filter attached at "50mm" (different angle).  This is a very small flower and I couldn't get a single shot where the front petals and the back petals were both in focus.  most of the time I crank the lens to the widest setting - in this case 50mm - and then move my entire body until the part I want is in focus.  I have managed to get a few good pictures with autofocus but this is really a time when you want to go to manual focus.

Ok, thats nice but not THAT impressive.  How about this....

and this

Again, this is not a very big flower.  And not a very big spider.  You can compare him to the bits of pollen for reference.  Both of these were shot at "73mm" (109mm effective) and f/8.  As I said before, this is a tool that needs bright light.  I took these late afternoon because you also need to be able to get almost on top of the subject.  Overhead sunlight would make direct shots almost impossible.

I have not tried using a flash with this yet but it would almost have to be off camera.  Also, forget about your lens hood.  Even the smallest one on my 18-55mm hit the subject.  

Because the DoF is so shallow, flat subjects will give you more area in focus.  In fact, if you can get a flat enough subject, its hard to tell the picture was not shot with a "real" macro.
I have more examples up on the DPOAB Flickr page.  

Close up lenses are classic "good enough" tools.  If your bread and butter is producing high quality extreme close ups, buy one of these. But if you just want to take really cool pictures of tiny spiders and pretty flowers, a close up lens and some practice will get you some great shots.