close up lens

[Don Boyd]

I am considering purchasing a "close-up" lens for my Canon A80 digital camera with which to shoot wildflowers. I noticed that it has the same thread size as some of my large format lenses (52mm). Does anyone have experience using a close up lens on nikkor 200 or 300 m lenses?

[Armin Seeholzer]

Hi

I used in my beginning days a close up filter on my Sinaron 135mm f 5.6 but I just remember in the midle it was aceptable but out to the corners it was not really sharp at all. So with just stretching the bellows I got better results. And today I use a Macro APO Rodagon state of the art lens for it!

[Gem Singer]

Hi Don,

Nikon makes a nice pair of close-up supplimentary lenses, with a 52mm screw-in thread. They are two-element lenses, called #3T and #4T. B&H has them available for around $30. I have a similar Nikon close-up lens called a #6T. It has a slightly larger diameter, and screws into a 62mm filter mount. It seemed to work O.K. for extreme close-up work, the few times I used it on a large format lens.

The most difficult part was composing and focusing. I racked the bellows all the way out, then moved the camera backward and forward until the image was sharply focused on the ground glass. I also needed to compensate my exposure time for the added bellows extension. It was much easier to use that close-up lens on my 35mm Nikon automatic camera.