Alternatives to Buying a Dedicated Macro Lens for your DSLR

If you want to experiment with taking Macro images but don’t have the budget to be able to afford a dedicated Macro lens for your DSLR there are a number of other Macro lens alternatives worth considering.

Each alternative has their own advantages and disadvantages in terms of price, portability and image quality – but it’s amazing at what can be achieved on a budget to give you a taste of the world of macro photography.

Close Up Lenses

Close up lenses (or supplementary lenses) are perhaps the cheapest alternative of getting into Macro Photography on a budget. These small lenses screw into the filter thread of your camera’s existing lens and allow the lens to focus closer than it’s normal minimum focal length. In doing so they allow you to fill more of the frame with your subject.

These lenses often come sold in a set of 3 and are labeled as +1, +2 and +3 etc (with +3 being the largest magnification). The ones pictured above are made by Bower and are +1 +2 +4 Close Up Lenses Set.

The positives of Close Up Lenses are their price and portability. They also allow you to retain all of the auto features of your lens (metering, focus, aperture control etc). The downside is that the loss of quality of image (you lose infinity focus and you’re also introducing an extra element to shoot through) can be more significant than some of the other methods.

For some examples of what can be achieved with close-up lenses check out this thread in our forums. (more…)