I picked up a toy to add to the fun I’ve been having with the Olympus C-5050: the Vivitar HD4 MC AF High Definition 0.43x Wide Angle Converter W/Macro. I’m pretty sure it was designed for security cameras, but add it a 41–>52mm filter adapter designed to screw onto the front of the Oly, and *poof!* you have a wide angle lens (not yet played with) whose front element unscrews to reveal a reversible macro lens.
Fun times.
Here we have examples taken with each of the “Macro” settings I now have available:
As you can see, the plain old Macro focus isn’t particularly Macro. At 20cm closest focus, on the 1/1.8″ sensor (7.18mm x 5.32mm, a bit less than 1/3 the size of the sensor on the D7000, and just slightly smaller the 10mp sensor on the LX7), the field of view is way to large to call ‘macro’ in any sense of the word.
But the Super Macro is a bit closer, something like 1:4. The macro filter doesn’t add much, sadly, and does introduce a bit of softness that might be fun to exploit in some contexts, but would be mostly distracting in others.
Again: Fun Times. Continue reading “Closer”
And this is as close as it gets without any additional aid. The eye isn’t quite in focus, but that’s often what you get when you’re holding the camera at arms length, maybe 2″ away from the subject, trying to follow it on a tiny screen from 2002.
