55MM Macro lenses...really work?

[Blazer88]

I have a Kodak DX7590 and someone on a different board brought to my attention that I could get better macro shots with my camera. Do these types of lenses work well? Here are the links to what I am talking about. Thanks for any advice.

Lenses
http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-55mm-Close-...ryZ74915QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Adapter
http://cgi.ebay.com/Tube-Adapter-fo...ryZ30059QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

[gregr]

They do work as advertised- however you need to take a lot of extra care to get sharp results. As you increase magnification to such high levels the tiniest of movements will cause the pictures to be blurry- so it's recommened that you use a tripod.
The other downside is that as you increase magnification your depth of field decreases, so you need to use very small apertures to get any depth of field at all-- and this means sloooow shutter speeds, which brings us back to the tripod

 

[Blazer88]

Well, I have a tripod so I think I'll give 'em a shot. I was just surprised to see how cheap these were. Does the lense brand make a big difference? I see the Tiffen ones advertised all over so I'm not sure if the ones I linked to would work the same. Thanks for the help!

 

[gregr]

These single element sets are all fairly similar. If you go with two element filters like the Canon 500D or Nikon T series filters the quality improves quite a bit, but so does the cost. I think for the money the filter sets are fun toys.

 

[Blazer88]

I just ordered both of them this morning. Is the F-stop what I need to adjust to get a better depth of field? I can't remember if i need to increase or lower the number to get more depth of field. And my shutter speed can be manual up to 16 seconds or something like that, so hopefully that should be long enough

 

[gregr]

Smaller aperture equals greater depth of field. The smaller the aperture the greater the fstop number-- f4 is a bigger aperture than f22 and f22 will get you much greater depth of field.
All that is explained, with example photos in this Reefkeeping Magazine article.
Greg