CLOSEUP LENSES
Not all closeup lenses are the same.
A friend of mine thought he had bought a good closeup lens, after all it was from B + W, a well-known brand and no mess from an unknown manufacturer. And a little more friendly price than the Canon closeup lens I use.
However, he was not completely satisfied with the photos he took. At first he sought the blame on himself, perhaps he was not focusing in the right place. He also thought it could be due to incorrect camera settings.
We decided to take some test shots for comparison. I photographed a random piece from a newspaper, about 36 x 24 mm in size. From a tripod in the studio. First with the Canon closeup lens on the camera and then with the same camera (the Canon PowerShot G3 X) exactly the same settings and the same lighting with the B + W closeup lens.
We compared the results in Adobe Lightroom (photo 1) and immediately noticed that the photo with the Canon closeup lens looked much better.
Then we first enlarged the piece in the middle of the image to 100% (photo 2), we already saw a really big difference.
Finally, we looked at a piece from the top right corner at 100% (photo 3). I can’t believe that a renowned brand dares to sell something like that. This made it clear once and for all that you should not rely solely on the brand name and that cheap is often not a wise choice.
My conclusion is that one well-known brand does monitor its quality better than the other well-known brand.
Click on one of the images below to see it larger.