Macro images with reverser ring

Many users have the Lumix G 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 II basic kit zoom. It is a good lens, and I use it a lot. Here is a quality comparison between kit zoom lenses. So don't be worried about using this lens, despite that some dislike the plastic construction.

It is possible to use it for macro images as well, by buying a very small and cheap accessory. By buying a reverser ring, it is possible to mount it backwards on the camera, which means that it can be used to take ultra high magnification images. Here I show how.

The picture below shows the Lumix GH4 camera with the Lumix G 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 II basic kit zoom lens:

In the front left of the camera, is the M4/3 to 52mm reverser ring As the zoom lens has a 46mm front lens thread, a 52mm to 46mm step up ring is also needed (on the right hand side).

When all of this is mounted to the camera, it looks like this:

From left to right in the picture above, you have the lens (mounted reversed), the 52mm to 46mm step up ring, the M4/3 to 52mm macro reverser ring, and finally the camera.

One specific trick to be aware of is setting the aperture. When the lens is mounted reversed, you can of course not control the aperture or the focus from the camera, or even manually from the lens. And using the lens wide open is just not possible, the depth of field (DOF) will be far too thin when using the lens wide open. So you'll generally need to stop down to around f/8-f/16.

You can stop the lens down with this crude method: Set a small aperture (large f-number) and a long shutter speed in manual exposure mode. Start the exposure. While the camera is exposing, remove the lens. The lens will then have your selected aperture. The focus distance is pretty much irrelevant here: Even if you could use the close or infinity focus distance, it doesn't matter much when using it reversed: The magnification will be very large anyway.

When mounted reversed, you cannot control the focus at all, so you'll need to move the camera back and forth to get your object in focus. However, you can use the zoom ring to change the magnification rate. It works best in the short end, where the magnification is the highest. Here is a short summary of the magnification rate at different focal lengths.

I have calculated this by photographing a millimeter scale. I also state the working distance, which is the distance from the object to the front end of the lens. Please note that when I say "front end of the lens", I mean the end closest to the object here, which is actually the rear end of the zoom lens.

Focal length	Magnification rate	Working distance	Image
42mm	1:1.16	64mm
25mm	1.2:1 (1.2X)	33mm
14mm	2.7:1 (2.7X)	20mm

For comparison, the Lumix-Leica 45mm f/2.8 macro lens has a max magnification of 1:1 (1X), and has a more generous working distance of 60mm.

I took an example image at 14mm, for the largest magnification rate. As you see, I placed the classic Lumix G 20mm f/1.7 lens very close to the camera here: The working distance is only 20mm, which makes the lightning somewhat difficult:

The resulting image looks like this, taken at f/14:

Here you can see the matte finish of this classic lens, which I like a lot better than the glossy finish of the newer lenses. The matte finish makes it safer to handle the lens.

Here is more of a real life example as well. I took it at f/16, 1/60s, ISO 200, using a TTL flash and a sync cable to be able to hold it next to the lens. The fly sitting on my hand is very small, the body is about 2mm long. No cropping:

Conclusion

It is quite cheap to get a macro reverser ring, which opens up a new world of ultra high magnification. A magnification of 2.7:1 is otherwise only possible with specialized lenses like the Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5X macro.

However, the downside is that you'll need to stop down the lens in a crude way prior to using it reversed, which makes it hard to compose your image is low light. As the lens is reversed, no EXIF information is recorded whatsoever about the aperture or focal length, or even the name of the lens. Also, the working distance will be quite short.

If you like to tinker with your camera, this can be a fun and cheap project to explore the world of high magnification macro.

Other alternatives

The Yasuhara Nanoha x5 is a specialized ultra high magnification lens for Micro Four Thirds. It is capable of 4-5X magnification. It has a very short working distance, not much more than 10mm, which makes it somewhat hard to use. It comes with the apertures f/11-f/32, selectable in full stops. Perhaps this sounds like small apertures, but you need to stop down a lot to get sufficient depth of field.

A simple and cheap alternative is to buy . Read more about it here. If you combine both rings, this can give a magnification of around 1.2X with a typical kit zoom lens.

Meike/Neewer macro rings: Highly recommended

I have previously tested a number of low cost solutions to macro photography. Mostly, they are quite hard to use, for example because they don't support changing the aperture or focusing. I think I had the most impressive results with a reverser ring, however, the working distance becomes very short, and there is no aperture control or focus possibility.

Finally, macro extension rings with electronic contacts are available at a low price. They are marketed as Meike, Skyblue, Neewer, and probably more names, and one pack includes two rings: One 10mm thick, and one 16mm thick. My rings look like this:

Using a +10 macro lens

There are many ways to achieve macro photo capabilities. The easiest is of course to buy a dedicated macro lens, like the Panasonic-Leica 45mm f/2.8 1:1 macro. However, that is an expensive lens, and I am often looking to test cheaper alternatives. I have looked into a number of options, see the table at the end of this article for a list.

Some macro options involve offsetting the lens further away from the camera, or reversing it, effectively cutting off the electrical communications between the camera and the lens. This has the negative side effect of removing the possibility to control the focus and the aperture of the lens.

Probably the cheapest and the simplest solution is to buy a close up filter to be screwed into the front threads of a lens you already have. These are typically rated as +1, +2, +4 and +10. I decided to try the most extreme, the one rated as +10:

One strange thing about the macro filter I got, is that the glass extends beyond the rear side of the metal ring. This means that when screwing it into a lens, the glass elements might meet, potentially damaging either. To avoid this, I used a 46mm stand off ring between the macro ring and the lens. Here they are mounted to the Lumix X 45-175mm f/4-5.6:

When using the +10 close up filter, the Lumix X 45-175mm f/4-5.6, the lens becomes 1:2 capable at 45mm, and 1:0.6 at 175mm. The working distance is 8cm through the focal length range. Here is a typical setup at 175mm focal length:

And the result image, taken with an aperture of f/13:

Sadly, the image quality is rather poor. As you can see, there are some significant chromatic aberration artefacts. Perhaps close up filters with a lower rating, e.g., +2, provide a better quality. But then again, they also give less magnification.

One big advantage with this method is that you can control the aperture from the camera. The focus can also be controlled, however, at this magnification, you are limited to very small fine tuning of the focus distance only. You must do the focusing by moving the object into focus.

Used on the Sigma 30mm f/2.8

I also tried to use the close up filter on the Sigma 30mm f/2.8 EX DN lens, which shares the 46mm filter thread.

In this case, I could do without the stand off ring. However, I could not screw the close up filter completely into the filter threads, as the glass surfaces would meet, which I don't like.

Using this solution, I was able to get a 1:2 magnification, with a 6cm working distance. Here is the output image:

In this case, I did not see any severe chromatic aberration artefacts, but then again, the enlargement is not nearly as large.

Other options

Here is a summary of various ways to achieve a macro ability:

Method	magnification	working distance	aperture	focus
Using a dedicated macro lens, the PL45	1:1 max	6cm	auto	auto
Macro extension rings, and a legacy normal lens	1.4:1 in my example	6cm	manual, if the lens has an aperture ring	no focus possibilty
Macro reverser ring, with Lumix 14-42mm	2.5:1 - 1.15:1	2-4cm	no control of aperture from camera	no focus possibilty
Olympus ZD 50mm f/2 lens with extra 65mm extension	2:1	3cm	no control of aperture from camera	no focus possibilty
Lumix G 45-200mm with reversed normal lens	3.5:1	5cm	auto	auto, but only small adjustments
Lumix X 45-175mm with +10 close up filter (this article)	1:2 (45mm), 1.7:1 (175mm)	8cm	auto	auto, but only small adjustments

Conclusion

This study perhaps shows that there are no free lunches. The cheap macro front filter lens is simple to use, but gives poor image quality. For the ultimate in image quality and simplicity, the best is probably to buy the Panasonic-Leica 45mm f/2.8 1:1 macro. in the first place.

Reversed normal lens as macro front lens

There are many ways to achieve macro photography. There is the obvious one, getting a dedicated macro lens. The Panasonic Leica Lumix DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 1:1 Macro lens is a good macro lens, but it is rather expensive.

Another choice is to use a legacy normal lens, some macro rings, and an adaptor. I write about this method here.

Yet another method is to reverse a lens. Using a cheap adaptor, you can mount a basic Lumix G 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 kit zoom lens for some very close macro capabilities.

In this article, I look into yet another method. This involves getting an adaptor ring with filter threads on each side. This can be bought quite cheaply at various auction sites. I chose the 52mm to 52mm adaptor ring:





This reverser ring can be screwed into the front lens threads of the Lumix G 45-200mm f/4-5.6 tele lens. Other lenses with 52mm front lens threads can be used as well. However, I found that the Lumix G 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 basic kit lens was useless for this purpose, it gave too much vignetting when mounting the reversed normal lens.

As the normal lens to mount reversed, I chose the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AIS. It is a classic manual focus lens, compact and with reasonably good quality. This video shows how to mount it:



It is best to set the normal lens at maximum aperture, to avoid vignetting. I also found that the Lumix G 45-200mm lens should be set to around 150-200mm for the best results.

Here is my test of the magnification rate using this setup.  I photograph a millimeter ruler to find the magification:



And the resulting image shows that 5mm horizontally is reproduced, with a sensor that is 17.3mm wide. This gives a magnification rate of 17.3:5, or 3.5:1. This is also written as 3.5x, and is an extremely large magnification.



I also made an example exposure of the face of a LEGO figure. Here is the setup, with a working distance of around 5cm:



Which produced this image:



I used the very small f/16 aperture on the Lumix G 45-200mm f/4-5.6 tele lens, and still the depth of focus is extremely thin. Only parts of the curved face is in focus.

Using this method, you can still control the aperture from the camera. You can also operate the focus of the lens, although in practice you are limited to a very small fine tuning of the focus, because of the thin depth of focus at this extremely large magnification.

Example image

Here is an example image of the texture from a sock, taken at 3.5x magnification. This was done by setting the Lumix G 45-200mm lens at 200mm, with the normal lens attached to the front. I used f/18 for more depth of focus, but still the focus is very narrow, and it is difficult to get everything you want into focus:



This magnification is of course very impressive, but one could ask: Could you achieve the same details by using the Panasonic Leica 45mm f/2.8 1:1 macro lens, and cropping out the centre of the image? I tried to photograph the same object using the PL45, and this is the maximum magnification I could achieve. I also used f/18 here:



To evaluate the amount of details from either setup, here are 100% crops from the centre of both images. The images have not been sharpened. Click on the images for the full view.

200mm + reversed normal lens, centre crop	PL45, centre crop

Based on this comparison, it is clear that using the reversed normal lens does give a higher resolution than simply using the PL45 macro lens. However, the image quality suffers a bit due to the number of glass elements the light must travel through.

Summary

Here is a summary of various ways to achieve a macro ability:

Method	magnification	working distance	aperture	focus
Using a dedicated macro lens, the PL45	1:1 max	6cm	auto	auto
Macro extension rings, and a legacy normal lens	1.4:1 in my example	6cm	manual, if the lens has an aperture ring	no focus possibilty
Macro reverser ring, with Lumix 14-42mm	2.5:1 - 1.15:1	2-4cm	no control of aperture from camera	no focus possibilty
Olympus ZD 50mm f/2 lens with extra 65mm extension	2:1	3cm	no control of aperture from camera	no focus possibilty
Lumix G 45-200mm with reversed normal lens (this article)	3.5:1	5cm	auto	auto, but only small adjustments

Based on this table, we see fairly easily that this method is in fact preferable, given that we need such an extreme magnification rate. It gives a good working distance, and automatic aperture handling, which is quite useful. There is also some possibility for fine tuning of the focus using the lens' own autofocus system.

GH2, ETC mode for macro video

The Panasonic GH2 has a very interesting feature, the ETC, Extra Tele Conversion mode. This is like a digital tele zoom. However, when used with videos, you still get the full resolution, with the centre of the sensor being used. This drawing illustrates the concept:

With this feature, you can record full HD videos with an effective 2.6x tele effect, with 2.6 being the fraction 2800/1080. Using the ETC mode, the Lumix G 100-300mm f/4-5.6 tele zoom lens gets an effective 1560mm maximum tele reach, in 35mm film camera equivalents.

However, this effect can also be used for even more enlargements when using a macro lens. Using the Panasonic Leica Lumix DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 1:1 macro lens gives you an maximum enlargement of 1:1. Using the ETC mode gives you a maximum of 2.6:1, which is very impressive. Keep in mind, though, that this only makes sense with videos, not with still images.

I have illustrated this effect with a macro video recording of my own eye. The following footage shows the same scene without and with ETC:



It was recorded using the "Manual Movie Mode", 1080p24, f/5.6, 1/25s. To get a sufficient exposure, I used ISO 1600.

As you can see, the depth of focus (DOF) is very thin, and it is difficult to keep my iris in focus. Setting a smaller aperture, e.g., f/8, would help here, but that would require an even higher ISO. And in my experience, there is significantly more noise with ETC mode compared with the ordinary video mode, especially at high ISO.

Interesting macro images with a fisheye lens

If you want a very wide lens for the Micro Four Thirds system, there are two choices: The Panasonic Lumix G 7-14mm f/4 and the Olympus M.Zuiko 9-18mm f/4-5.6. The Panasonic lens is the widest, and is also the most expensive. Both are considered to be quite good.

But it's easy to forget that there is a third choice, the Panasonic Lumic G 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens.

When considering which of these wide lenses to buy, I landed on the unconventional choice: The fisheye lens. My reasoning was that it has the widest field of view, and is the most compact. The compactness can be illustrated by this picture:

But I was also fascinated by the very short minimum focus distance. In the specifications, this close focus distance is stated as 0.10m. This doesn't sound very impressive. But keep in mind that the focus distance is measured from the sensor plane. So the distance from the front of the lens is only about a couple of cm, or about one inch.

This close focus distance opens up a number of creative possibilities. Below is one example. I put a LEGO figure very close to the lens. It is actually slightly closer than the minimum focus distance. But to keep it reasonably in focus still, I set a very small aperture, f/18. And I used manual focus to make sure the focus was as close as possible.

The resulting image, when cropped a bit, is this:

I think the distorted perspective due to the very wide field of view makes the image interesting.

A big drawback with this method is that the lens casts shadow on the subject. It is very difficult to achieve a proper lightning, as the field of view is very wide. Putting a light source close, so that it illuminates the clown's face, will usually make the light source visible in the picture. Which is not the intention, clearly.

Let's see what we can do when taking the lens outdoors. Here is a picture of a butterfly:

Unlike the clown picture, this image is completely uncropped. It was taken in the same way, by setting the focus as close as possible, and using a small aperture, f/11, for a very deep depth of field. I used ISO 250 and 1/60 second shutter speed.

To take the picture, I put the front of the lens about 2cm from the butterfly. Of course, this made it rather stressed, and it left the scene shortly after. So the time I had to compose the image was very short.

Looking at the composition, it is clear that it leaves quite a bit to be desired. For example, the butterfly is squarely in the middle of the image, which is usually a bit boring. It is common to put interesting objects about 1/3 from the frame edges, to make the image more exciting. This is usually referred to as the rule of thirds. Some Panasonic cameras can be configured to show the guidelines that correspond to the rule of thirds in the display, to aid in the composition. Here is an example from the Panasonic GH1:

The Panasonic GH1 display, configured to show the rule of thirds guidelines in white. Placing interesting items where these lines meet usually gives an interesting composition. It is common to place the horizon along one of these lines.

Also, it would be fine if the flower shape was repeated more times in the frame.  We can see one uncluttered flower in the right part of the image, but two more would be fine.

Finally the background could be more interesting.  Let's say we had a couple walking down the path behind the butterfly.  That would surely make the image a lot better.

But planning all this is very difficult, since the butterfly will leave the scene after a split second when putting the camera in it's face, literally.  I still think this image illustrates well the creative potential of the lens.

Looking at how a typical macro image of a butterfly looks like, let's consider this one taken with the Panasonic Leica 45mm f/2.8 1:1 macro lens:

This is what a macro picture usually looks like. Even though it was taken with a small aperture, f/7.1, the depth of field is still very thin. So the background is completely out of focus. The other exposure details are: ISO 100, 1/100 second.

The thin depth of focus is an advantage: It means that you don't need to worry about the composition of the background. The background will be blurred out. As long as the bokeh is pleasing, you can put your energy into keeping the subject interesting.

But it can also be a disadvantage. The background could potentially be used to make the image more interesting. Putting an insect into an environment, rather than just picturing it with the background blurred out, can make a very stunning photo.

But a macro lens will virtually always keep the background out of focus, even with a very small aperture. This is due to the relatively long focal length. The macro lens used in the picture above has a focal length of 45mm, which is pretty common for such a lens.

The fisheye lens, on the other hand, has a very short focal length, only 8mm. This gives a deeper depth of focus (DOF), and keeps the background more in focus.

The conclusion here is that the fisheye lens can be used to make very interesting close up images. But as the background is more in focus compared to when using a macro lens, the composition can be very tricky.

GH2, built-in flash for macro use

Lightning is critical for macro photography. To illustrate this, I will present a scene I tried to photograph. I used the Panasonic Leica Lumix DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 1:1 Macro lens. To make sure I used the maximum magnification, I selected manual focus (MF), and moved the focus ring until I reached the closest focus distance. Then I placed the camera so that the subject came in focus. This way, I was sure that I used 1:1 macro, which means that the subject is the same size as the sensor area, 17.3mm x 13.0mm.

As a test subject, I originally intended to use a bee. However, I found that chasing a bee around while it was visiting flowers, was much too difficult. Therefore, I found a bee that had been killed by a spider's web. With the bee being suspended, it was much easier to photograph in a controlled fashion.

First, let's consider what aperture to use. The PL45 lens has a maximum aperture of f/2.8, which has been criticized as being too small. Many would have preferred it to be f/2, to make the lens more useful for portraits. In this case, I want to have some depth of field, so I try to set it to f/5.6, a point at which many Micro Four Thirds lenses reach their optimum performance.

Here is the image at f/5.6, 1/60s, ISO 3200:

As you can see, the image is in fact not very good. One wing is in focus, the other is not. The rear part of the bee is in focus, but not the front. We can easily conclude that the depth of focus is too thin: Only parts of the insect is in focus.

To get a better depth of field, let's set the aperture to f/13. Some may worry that f/13 is too small, and will give some dullness due to diffraction. That is true, but as long as you don't make a big magnification of the print, that should not be a problem. For web use, f/13 is no problem at all, and you could even try to use f/16 if needed. I have studied the diffraction effects here.

I took ten images at f/13, 1/15s, ISO 3200, and this one is the most successful:

There are some problems here. First, you can see that the image is not framed very well. I was handholding the camera, which makes framing hard. Also, while the image has much better depth of focus than the previous, it now has some motion blur effects. The shutter speed, 1/15s, is much too slow to handhold the camera, even with Optical Image Stabilization (OIS). Finally, the high ISO at 3200 makes the image a bit noisy.

There is an easy way to solve all these problems: Just use the built-in flash. It turns out that the small built-in flash does cover the entire frame when using the PL45 lens at the closest focus range. The illustration below explains why.

In the illustration, a LEGO figure is placed at the minimum focus distance of the lens. At 1:1 magnification, the distance from the front lens element is 7cm. The built-in flash covers the focal length of 14mm, which corresponds to 75° diagonal field of view.

The resulting image is this:

As you can see, the entire image frame is illuminated by the built-in flash, even at maximum magnification.

A note about the lens hood: I don't like the supplied hood. It is much too wide, and does not do a good job at keeping out stray light. So I made my own hood, composed out of three elements: A 46mm stand off ring (glassless filter), a 46mm-37mm step down ring, and finally a 37mm-28mm step down ring. This gives the ultimate protection against stray light (in my opinion), and also good protection against objects touching the front lens element accidentally.

If you use the original hood, the light from the flash will be blocked by the hood, and you cannot use the built-in flash with macro images.

Back to our bee example. Here is the same image taken with the on-board flash, at f/13, 1/60s, ISO 160:

Using the flash allows for base ISO (160), and there is no problem with camera shake. The flash light is very quick, and freezes the image instantly. We clearly see that this image is much more sharp.

On the other hand, this method is not perfect for macro images: We see that the background has become very dark. This is because the flash light spreads out, and becomes less powerful for the background at a larger distance. Also, the flash light coming from a single light source does give a "flatness" to the image, which is not optimal. The nature of the image changes completely when using the flash.

Using the built-in flash for macro is a quick and easy way to get usable macro images.

Example video capture, GH2+Lumix-Leica 45mm f/2.8 macro

Here is an example video capture using the Panasonic Lumix GH2 camera with the Panasonic Leica Lumix DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 1:1 macro lens.

The camera was handheld, and I left the aperture at f/2.8, shutter speed around 1/100 second. I used the 720p mode, which, since I have the European camera model, gives me 50fps. It was downmixed to 25fps using Openshot video editing software.



I left the autofocus on, using the face detection focus mode. Initially, the camera chose to focus on the toy men on the train station platform, which suited me fine.

As the train enters the frame, the focus starts wandering off, which doesn't really help in this case. However, the focus returns to the toy figures afterwards, which is desirable. In this case, it would probably have been better to turn off autofocus during the video capture, since it doesn't help much at all.

Other lenses, like the Lumix G 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 would probably have focused faster. However, with a maximum aperture of f/5.6 at 42mm, it would not have given the nice blurred effect of items out of focus. On the other hand, a large part of the frame is in fact out of focus in this video. So perhaps f/5.6, giving more of the subject in focus, would have been a better choice here anyway.

GH2 touch screen AF (macro example)

One of the new features of the G2/GH2, is touch screen LCD. Some fans have been negative about this feature, since they are afraid of losing the hard buttons on the camera body. It turns out that the touch LCD is an additional feature, and that it does not replace any hard button functions. So those who dislike a touch screen can ignore it, without losing any vital functionality.

One application where the touch screen makes some sense, is macro photo. It is rather quick to move the focus point around in the frame. Here is an example usage, with the Panasonic Leica 45mm f/2.8 lens:



You can doubleclick on the video to be able to view it in other sizes.

As you see, the response is not very quick. It takes a moment from changing the focus point until the camera actually starts changing the focus.

I'm using the A mode on the mode dial. Using the iA mode typically gives me the focus tracking mode, in which the response from touching until the focus changes is a bit faster.  So if you want the focus response to be quicker, set the dial to iA.

In the video, I am sliding my finger over the screen now and then.  This is not necessary. You can just point where you want the focus point.  My sliding finger action is probably something I've learned from using an Iphone.

This can also be done during video recording. The response speed is the same, as far as I can tell, during video recording.

Of course, the PL45 lens is not the quickest around in terms of autofocus. Using a quicker lens will make the response quicker as well.

I have also made an analysis of the focus speed of the GH2 for a number of lenses, and compared with GH1 for some of them.

Using the 8mm fisheye lens as a macro lens

Using a fisheye lens as a macro lens is probably a very strange idea. But the Panasonic Lumix G 8mm Fisheye lens has a remarkably short minimum focus distance, so it actually makes some sense.

The closest focus distance is specified as 0.1m. However, this is measured from the sensor plane. So the distance from the front element is about 0.02m, or 20mm.

This corresponds to a magnification of 0.20x, or 1:5, which is not very impressive. We should keep in mind, though, that the field of view is more compressed in the corners, hence this magnification measure doesn't make much sense for the fisheye lens.

Here's my setup for photographing a LEGO figure at the closest focus distance:

The camera is on a tripod, and the figure is about 2cm from the front lens element. At this close distance, it is inevitable that the lens casts some shadow on the subject.

And here is the resulting image, taken at ISO 100, f/5.6, 1.3 second exposure:

The very close focus distance possible with the Lumix 8mm lens can be used to make interesting compositions. Especially when combined with the deep depth of field associated with a wide angle lens.

Dual focus

In macro photography, the depth of field is commonly a constraining factor. At high magnification, even using f/16 might not give enough depth of field, if the object is not narrow. And closing down the aperture beyond around f/11 is not adviceable due to diffraction.

One way to get around this, is to take more than one photo, and change the focus distance between them. The photos can then be merged in photo editing software, to yield one single photo where more than normal is in focus. This technique is some times referred to as focus stacking.

When having a lot of photos to merge, it is best to use some software to do the merging automatically, since it involves a lot of tedious, manual work. However, when only merging two photos, it can be done quickly in any photo editing software that feature layers, e.g., The Gimp.

Here is an example. I took this picture of two LEGO minifigures. The figures were placed in a simple macro soft box to get even lightning. I used the Panasonic Lumix Leica 45mm f/2.8 1:1 macro lens for the image, and placed the autofocus area on the figure faces for focus. I used f/5.6, which is far from enough from getting both figures in focus at the same time.

Photo 1: Left figure in focus:



Photo 2: Right figure in focus:



Merging the two images is a matter of loading them both into the same image in two different layers, and then removing the out of focus areas. Note that some lenses will give a different field of view depending on the focus distance. Hence, you may need to rescale one (or more) of the photos when merging.

This merged image would have been impossible to take with only one exposure:

Macro photos with the Leica Lumix 45mm f/2.8

The Leica Lumix 45mm f/2.8 1:1 macro may look like an ordinary macro lens on paper. However, while most macro lenses are specified as 1:1, they are related to the 35mm full frame format. So, the 1:1 designation means that they can be used to photograph an object which is the same size as a classic film negative, or 36mm by 24mm.

For the Panasonic Leica 45mm lens, on the other hand, the 1:1 designation means that it can be used to photograph items that are the same size as the sensor, which is about one quarter of the area as a full frame film negative. So you can photograph very small items, probably much smaller than you can see with your own eyes.



For example, I photographed some item on the tiled floor, and when accidentally zooming in on the tiles in the image, I noticed that they had an offset printing pattern. Somewhat naively, I had thought that they were made from natural materials.

Let's verify that the lens is indeed capable of true 1:1 reproduction. I chose the minimum focus distance, and placed a measure band at a distance where it was in focus. This is the resulting image:



We can see that the subject is about 17mm wide, which corresponds to the width of the Four Thirds sensor. So the closest focus does indeed give a 1:1 reproduction, also denoted as 1x.

Let's use this reproduction rate to photograph a common, daily object. I chose the Iphone 3GS. Using a tripod to get a shake free exposure:



And here is the resulting image:



Looking at a 100% crop reveals details that are, perhaps not surprising, but at least interesting:



We see how the LCD display consists of red, green and blue segments. To get white colours, all three are used. Yellow is achieved by combining red and green, and so on.

This principle is used by most imaging and display devices. Image sensor generally use a Bayer pattern, though, where the pixel sites are arranged in a square pattern. One two by two segment consists of two green pixels, and one red and one blue. This mimics the human eye, which is also more sensitive to green colors than to others. See the illustration below of the Bayer pattern:



For comparison, here is also a 100% crop of a 1:1 macro image of my computer monitor. As you can see, it uses the same principle as the Iphone. However, the individual pixels are larger on the monitor:

Diffraction

Diffraction is a physical phenomenon. In digital photography, it is used to describe the blur which is associated with a high sensor pixel pitch, and a small aperture. This blur will potentially make your images less sharp, when you close down to very small apertures. This is still a physical phenomenon, and not a defect with the camera or the lens.

The amount of diffraction depends on the pixel pitch, and the aperture opening. The sensor pitch depends on the sensor size and the number of pixels. The smaller the sensor, or the higher the number of megapixels, the more diffraction. Also, the smaller the aperture, the higher the diffraction.

For Micro Four Thirds cameras, it is generally said that one should be careful using apertures smaller than f/8. For example, f/11 or f/16 could potentially generate diffraction.

This can be a problem with macro photography, in which you will need to close down the aperture a lot to get sufficient depth of focus. How much can you close down the aperture before the diffraction becomes a problem?

In my reviews of the Olympus Zuiko Digital 50mm f/2 1:2 macro lens, and the Panasonic Lumix Leica 45mm f/2.8 1:1 macro lens, I have looked at the effect of stopping down the aperture on the depth of focus. In general, we see that with closeups, at least f/5.6 is needed to get a sensible depth of focus, unless the subject is pretty flat.

Here is a series of images taken as maximum magnification with the Panasonic Lumix Leica 45mm f/2.8 1:1 macro lens. Focus was set on the middle LEGO face eyes. The left face is 8mm to the front of the centre face, and the right face is 8mm to the rear. One LEGO unit is 8mm. Click on an image to view it larger.

f/2.8:
f/4:
f/5.6:
f/11:
f/22:
As you can see, the depth of focus increases as the aperture gets smaller. Looking at these scaled down images, it is hard to see much effect of diffraction, though.

To examine the effect of diffraction more closely, let's look at 100% views of the centre face mouth. Click on the image to view it larger.


What we see here, is that the image taken with f/22 shows some diffraction effect. It is less sharp than the other images.

Still, it is up to the user to decide what is more important: Depth of focus, or sharpness at pixel level. If it is important to have a large depth of field, I would say the image taken with f/22 is the best, despite some dullness at the 100% view. If used on the web, for example, this dullness would not matter at all, due to scaling the image down to fit a typical window. Looking at the series of images above, the latter one is the most sharp on overall, despite being less sharp when zooming in.

The conclusion here, I think, is that when using f/16 or smaller, there is some diffraction effect. However, you should not be afraid to use these apertures, if depth of focus is important. The photographer must decide what is most important.