I owned a dedicated macro lens, the 105mm micro nikkor for a long time. It is truly a great piece of glass. I used it a lot for portraiture much more than closeup work. I realized quickly that I was not into insects type of work and I was not keen on 1:1 macro work. Every now and then it is very useful to go to that level, but very rarely I felt the need.

And then I bought the Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 AF-S VR lens. It quickly took over as my portrait lens and my all purpose telephoto lens. It relegated the 105mm to a dusty corner in no time. Worse, when I travelled, it was the first lens I left either at home or in the hotel when I went out. Whenever I had to cut down on weight and / or the number of lenses I carried, I left the lens :( . Of course, once I was in the field, I really needed something that focused closer.

During this period, I read John Shaw’s Closeups in nature. I was surprised to read that one of his favorite closeup kits was his 70-200 VR lens mated with a Canon 500D closeup filter. A closeup filter basically brings down the minimum focus distance of a lens. I had tried a cheap hoya closeup filter kit before. While it worked reasonably well with my 50mm f/1.8 lens, it was horrible with my 18-70 kit lens, the edges were very soft and it had pretty bad chromatic aberration. I was surprised that John Shaw recommended this. After a brief email to John Shaw, I decided to give this a try.

I had seen some exceptional work done with this setup before. My friend Vinod Menon has some amazing samples of this work in his Macro gallery. For instance, check this photograph.

John Shaw is absolutely right. When mated with an exceptionally high quality glass like the 70-200 VR, this macro kit delivers. The quality is indistinguishable from the results I obtained with my 105mm micro nikkor.

 

100% crop

Pros

  1. One less lens to carry around. I rarely go out without my 70-200 VR lens. I take the 500D filter with me and I get a macro kit available.
  2. It is as good as your lens. With the 70-200 VR, I get AF-S *and* VR in addition to incredible bokeh, not to mention the zoom capability. The first two may not matter much when you manual focus, but the last two simply make this setup much more usable.

  3. No need to refocus after zooming. Yes, you read it right. Once you focus, change the zoom level to change composition, you don’t have to refocus. [Assuming you are using a tripod, that is]. It does not completely eliminate the need for focusing rails and other related equipment, but for most common uses, changing the framing without having to move is pretty amazing.

    4. Series of leaves, 70mm. No need to change tripod position for reframing.

Cons

  1. Not 1:1. You don’t hit 1:1 with this setup unless you use a ~500 mm focal length lens.
  2. Very limited working range. The range of focus is about 50 cms [from the film plane to the subject, with a long lens like the 70-200, subtract the length of the lens]. This means that in areas where you can’t physically get closer, this is useless. This is definitely where you need a dedicated macro lens. With a dedicated macro lens, you can focus your subject from almost any distance greater than the minimum focus distance. With the closeup filter, you are pretty much stuck with this distance.
  3. Shallow DOF due to the high focal length and magnification. You have to stop down more [not a factor of 500D, but because of the focal lengths used]
  4. Heavy. As compared to the 105mm, which you *might* handhold, the 70-200 VR + 500D combination is heavier.

John Shaw’s Closeups in nature has a great explanation of how closeup filters work. It is a great read. Michael Weber’s 500D review is very informative as well.

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