superfine Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 Well, I pretty much said it all inside of my subject line... But I need help finding a CHEAP macro lens for my oldstyle Olympus camera. I really love close-up shots, but I only have a 50mm lens. Can anyone tell me where to get one? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leandro_dutra1 Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 KEH, the used equipment section of Adorama and B&H... perhaps Zuiko.com, and eBay. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robin_terrey Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 The cheapest answer would be to get a Vivitar 2X Macro focusing teleconverter. They can be found cheaply on Ekbay. It will turn your 50mm lens into a 100mm 1:1 macro. You will lose 2 stops so if you have a f1.8 it will become a f3.6. As most macro is done at much smaller apertures it won't matter. I have an article where Herb. Keppler in Modern Photography compared a Nikon 105mm macro against the Nikon f1.8 & f1.4 50mm lenses. His conclusion was that the f1.8 lens matched the 105mm macro. The f1.4 wasn't far behind. It can also be used on longer lenses but won't get to 1:1. It is also a very good 7 element teleconverter. It has an variable extension tube between the converter and the lens. As you rack out the lens the magnification increases. Panagor also made a 4 element converter which won't work as a teleconverter but by moving elements will get down to slightly better than 1:1. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akajohndoe Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 Actually, the least expensive route to getting close-ups would be an extension tube. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harold_gough Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 One man's "cheap" is another man's "expensive". Do you have a budget? Is there any other type of lens lacking in your kit? Perhaps the one lens would cover both e.g. an 85 or 90mm lens might combine macro and portraiture and be generally useful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john_hermanson2 Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 or 49mm screw in closeup lenses. John, www.zuiko.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robin_terrey Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 One advantage with the Viv. MF teleconverter is to allow greater distance between the lens and subject. The instruction quote distances from front element: at 1:1 Canon 50mm f1.8 133mm, at 2.6:1 Viv. 55mm f2.8 macro 32mm, at 1:2.1 Viv. 135mm F2.8 691mm and the Viv 70-210mm f3.5 at 210mm 1:1.5 at 756mm. So if you intend to shoot skittish creatures it's an advantage to use a lens which allows greater stand-off. I often use mine with a Viv. 135mm f2.8 close focusing lens to give me a 270mm f5.6 which focuses from infinity to 20 inches. Great for butterflies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
superfine Posted June 20, 2008 Author Share Posted June 20, 2008 Thank you so much for all of your help. My budget is extremely limited, mostly because I don't have a job and I have to go off of my parents bugets. >.> <.< Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Gammill Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 Shop around. Check KEH and Ebay. Sometimes local sellers and flea markets may have one. I once bought a used 50mm f3.5 Rokkor preset macro for 10 USD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john_robison3 Posted June 21, 2008 Share Posted June 21, 2008 For your very limited budget I'd second John H. Close-up lens sets are now usually +1, +2, +4 lenses. They screw on like a filter. The +1 won't be much use on your 50mm lens but the +2 will pick up focus at about where your 50 leaves off. When talking about "macro" it's good to define a few parameters. What subject size will you be photographing? Small bugs, little flowers, butterflies? Whatever the subject turns out to be, this will define the field size. With your 50mm lens focused as close as it will go the field size is about 6.5 inches X 9.5 inches. With the +4 attached to your 50mm you would be able to get down to a size of about 2.5 inches X 3.5 inches, this with a working distance of about 5 inches from the front of the lens. Please keep in mind that with a close up lens attached you can only focus close, you would have to remove it to photograph at regular distances. One more point, the Vivitar macro focusing mentioned can sometimes be found for only a little more than a close up set and will provide a good bit more versatility. they are not available new and you would have to check a source such as ebay. Just make sure that it has a OM mount, ones made for any other make will not fit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patrick j dempsey Posted June 21, 2008 Share Posted June 21, 2008 The highest quality for cheap is an extension tube. It's just a metal tube that connects the lens to the camera with linkages for the aperture. They come in sets of varying sizes, usually 12mm, 20mm, 35mm. You can stack them in various arrangement. Use them on a 50mm f/1.8 which is one of the sharpest lenses in the Olympus OM line. An extension tube works exactly like the focus on the lens, by moving the lens forward of the film, so there is no optical quality loss. It is not useful to use a long lens with extension tubes because that decreases the magnification power. Also, wide lenses are not useful with extension tubes because they require you to be too close to the subject to get decent magnification. If you use 50mm worth of extension... 20mm + 35mm, then you get Macro. (With extension tubes, when you put the same amount of extension as the focal length of the lens, that makes it Macro, meaning 1:1 magnification). The advantage of extension tubes in a set is that you have the ability to create various magnification powers with a pretty decent range. Another tool used by people doing macro work is a "reversal ring" which allows you to mount the lens backwards. Like extension tubes, you don't loose any optical quality and it allows you to get very very close to the subject. Some people combine reversal ring and extension tubes for maximum magnification without the addition of any extraneous glass elements. A professional quality stepup would be a bellows system, which is a more expensive version of extension tubes and allows you to finely control the amount of magnification. Close-up filters or diopters can create pretty severe quality losses and the ones that don't are very very expensive. They introduce more glass-to-air surfaces which increases the chance of glare. A teleconverter will not automatically make a macro lens. Teleconverters are designed to maintain a lenses native focus range while simply magnifying the image. So with the 50mm lens, your closest focus is around 18 inches. This is close enough to make a human head fill the frame. A 2X teleconverter will keep the same 18 inches of close-focus but now the image will be half of the human head. That's not macro in any book! Good teleconverters without optical flaws are very expensive and in general there is always some degredation in image quality. If you decide to order extension tubes, be sure they have the aperture linkages and also be sure they are for Olympus OM film cameras... there are many ignorant sellers out there labeling Olympus digital 4/3s system as "Olympus OM 4/3" which is NOT and OM system. Silliness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rroberto Posted June 21, 2008 Share Posted June 21, 2008 A very inexpensive way for macro shots is a reversing ring. Tough part is finding one. This reverses your 50mm lens which gives you very close-up capabilities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim_kohlman Posted June 22, 2008 Share Posted June 22, 2008 a few options, as mentioned already. some are better than others. The best is to get a macro lens (ie. zuiko 50mm f/3.5 macro), you can find some very cheap macro focusing lenses non-mfg but some of them are pretty bad. Other options are - Macro focusing teleconvertor - Extension Tubes - screw on closeup lenses - bellows I find working with extension tubes and closeup lenses is a bit of a pain, I prefer to use a proper macro lens and you don't have to change closeup lenses or extension tubes when you get close / farther away from the subject. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harold_gough Posted June 22, 2008 Share Posted June 22, 2008 Beware of reversing rings. They do the job as far as giving you the macro function you seek but you lose the auto diaphragm function, a serious handicap with all but static subjects and with the camera on a tripod. I have had such rings for decades but have never used them for that reason. The same applies to my Canon 20mm manual diaphragm bellows lens, which I have used seriously only once, some 20 years ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patrick j dempsey Posted June 22, 2008 Share Posted June 22, 2008 Oh yeah, good point Harold... also with reversal rings you cannot even manually change the aperture of the lens, you are stuck wide-open. However if you have one of those adapters for mounting your OM lenses to other cameras... like to a Canon EOS camera for instance, then that adapter could be put on the mount end of the lens and used to hold the aperture in stopped-down mode. Then you would have manual aperture settings. Another downside to reversal rings is it exposes the rear element of the lens to the world. This is not too big of an issue with a studio, but if you wanting to go outdoors its not really a good plan to have your rear element exposed with the lens itself only hanging on by the filter rings. You can still put filters on the lens between the lens and the reversal ring, but then you are depending on the filter to hold your lens, again, not an ideal situation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
User_502260 Posted June 22, 2008 Share Posted June 22, 2008 I have an adapter which fits on the back of the lens when it's reversed so you have manual aperture control. There are a lot of good suggestions. The 50/1.8 lenses are very inexpensive. You could get one, reverse it and attach it to the front of the lens you already have. You would keep the second lens wide open and use the aperture control on the lens attached to the camera. You would also need a 49mm to 49mm male to male adapter. You could also use Gorilla Tape cut into a thin enough strip and tape the lenses together. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patrick j dempsey Posted June 23, 2008 Share Posted June 23, 2008 Jeff, I've never heard of that... cool idea! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harold_gough Posted June 23, 2008 Share Posted June 23, 2008 Gorilla Tape? Is that recommended from experience? Having used Gorilla Glue, I suspect that getting lens and camera body apart again could be a challenge. The lens attachment end of an auto bellows has a threaded socket for a cable release. Where this part of the bellows can be detached (always?) it can travel on the reversed lens to the subject. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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