Cheap close-up / macro setup

Mike_J_Smith

Mike_J_Smith

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Mike
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Hi All,

looking for some advice please. I sold all my camera equipment recently and use my iPhone for everything now. There’s plenty of compromise to do this, but I’m happy making them for the ease of use.

One area of photography I can’t do well with an iPhone is close-up / macro. I paint miniature models and want to be able to take photos of them. The iPhone is almost there but the depth of focus isn’t good as you can’t control aperture.

The models are let’s say from 3cm2 up to 10cm2, so I don’t need true macro really, just to be able to fill the frame and have manual control. Doesn’t need to be amazing quality as the photos are for websites / Instagram rather than A1 sized prints! I had a Sony alpha 3 and the 90mm macro lens - safe to say that was overkill for my needs!

what would your recommendations be for a cheap setup to enable that? Under £250 as a guide, but cheaper would be better. Second hand I’m guessing, old body and maybe old manual lens?

cheers,

Mike
 
GreenNinja67 said:
If you find a Pentax DSLR body 2nd hand I have some manual PK tubes and a Pentax SMC 50mm f1.7 which gave superb results.

I've bought a macro lens now so they're surplus to requirements.

Let me know if you're interested & I'll put a for sale thread up.

I took this with the combo:
Click to expand...

Photos look nice & sharp. How do the extension tubes affect depth of field? Ideally I want to be able to take a single photo at a high aperture and capture a decent depth of field.
 
Tubes (or a macro lens) severely affect DOF. It's the nature of the beast I'm afraid.

The fungi shot was I think f11.

To get more DOF you'll have to focus stack.
 
The price of film era manual lenses seems to have risen quite a bit but if you can find a 50mm f2.8 macro for £60 as I did some time ago that could be a good buy. Other than that a manual 50mm f1.8 and a cheap close up filter may be a possibility. Or even a modern AF kit lens may be in your price range as some of them are cheap on the used market. I've recently been using a No.4 close up filter and I'm happy with the results. They often come in sets of 3 or 4. I think my set of three was £27.

I'd rather use close up filters than tubes as with tubes you tend to be stuck with a limited distance but with close up filters there's probably going to be more scope to choose the distance you want to shoot at to frame the shot as you want.

You'll need a camera and possibly an adapter too. So... lens... £30 to £60 maybe (either an old prime or a cheap kit lens,) adapter £10 to £15 maybe, close up filters £30 or probably less. That's in the region of £100 or so leaving something like £150 for a camera which isn't much but you may well find a Micro Four Thirds or APS-C camera within range.

So it's doable :D IMO :D
 
Good call on the close up lenses Alan, I'd forgotten about those.

But DOF will still be greatly diminished, the closer you get the less DOF you have.

Physics I'm afraid.
 
GreenNinja67 said:
Good call on the close up lenses Alan, I'd forgotten about those.

But DOF will still be greatly diminished, the closer you get the less DOF you have.

Physics I'm afraid.
Click to expand...
Not just the closer you get, macro at longer working distances has the same issue.
IIRC it works out for macro the DOF is dependant on aperture, circle of confusion (basically sensor size & how sharp is focused) & magnification.

There are of course digital tricks like focus stacking that can get round the limitations of physics.

There are lots of reasonably cheap ways to get macro on any camera where you can change lenses, some of the should work with phone cameras too :)
The different approaches are described well at www.extreme-macro.co.uk many of the tips are appropriate for us lesser mortals who only do normal macro.
 
GreenNinja67 said:
Good call on the close up lenses Alan, I'd forgotten about those.

But DOF will still be greatly diminished, the closer you get the less DOF you have.

Physics I'm afraid.
Click to expand...

With flower shots and the like I'd typically be at f8 (FF) and that would translate to f4 for MFT and... er... f5.6 for APS-C so there is some scope to stop down and crop and still end up with a picture which will for example fill a screen. It may not be award winning when pixel peeping but a full screen image even when cropped to 1200-1500 pixels on the long side may be good for whole picture viewing and better than what you'd get from a smartphone. Hopefully :D

For a subject in the 3 to 10cm range which sounds like the sort of size I'd be looking at for flower and detail shots with a close up filter I think it's doable for budget as long as gallery quality prints viewed through a magnifying glass aren't the desired end result :D
 
Thanks for the responses.

I don't really need 1:1 macro and I'd really like to be able to get away without focus stacking. I could do that with the A7iii + 90mm macro, but perhaps I'm asking too much for the budget vs that (clearly not expecting equivalent image quality!). If I need to focus stack, I could probably do that with the iPhone although it would be a faff.

I can pick up a 400d and a 50-60 mm macro lens to fit; I can even see some of the 100mm canon macros going for under £200 on ebay. I used to have both of those, so that's an option.
 
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