Macro Photography with Close-up Lenses

Today’s post by Joe Farace

In a previous post, I wrote about using Close-up Filters for macro photography with mirrorless cameras and I put the use to work over the weekend. While working in my yard ding some pre-Fall clean-up I noticed a praying mantis (Mantodea) in the bushes near my garage.

I ran into the house grabbed the first camera sitting there with a swing-out LCD—I like using that feature when shooting macro photography—stuck on the Lumix 14-42mm kit lens and reached in my camera bag for the close-up filter case for Vivitar close-up filter kit that I purchased on eBay for less than $22 including shipping. I shook out a filter stuck it on the lens while walking out the garage and setting my ISO at 640 to maintain a high shutter speed to minimize camera movement. (It later turned out that it was the +4 filter, which gave me a final exposure of 1/400 sec at f/9.

I was able to make several shots before Mantodea hopped/flew away. The moral of the story: Keep a camera handy and having a close-up filter kit available is not a bad idea because you never know what kind of photo op may present itself.