Hoya diopters–OT

Barbara, I would think they’d work fine, just like they do on film SLR’s. They have one advantage over extension tubes (which is an option with removable lens cameras): they don’t change the effective aperture of the lens.

Chuck

Thanks, Chuck.

Barbara, these diopters work fine, provided you don’t have any straight lines in your images as they cause some distortions.
If you can afford it, buy achromatic diopters; with these you will obtain better quality , especially in teh corners. Minolta used to make some fine ones at a reasonable price. Although, a reasonable price is still quite some money.
The best way is to buy +2 and +3; you can combine both to +6.

Leen

I have the Hoya +1,+4,+2 set. I use them from time to time (mainly on static subjects such as coins where I can use a tripod). In combination with my G3 I am focusing very close indeed – the depth of field is tiny, and hand held it’s very hard to keep things in focus. On my camera at least the easiest way to focus is to set the camera to its minimum focal distance and then move the camera towards the object until the correct point is in focus. Using a flash helps to allow a narrow enough aperture to increase the depth of field – I point my external flash straight up and bounce it back down onto the subject using a piece of white card and an omnibounce style diffuser.
Susan S

Barbara

I am a long time user of diopters as well as also having true macro lenses. Diopter are a good inexpensive and light way to travel. I will not lie and tell you they are as good as a macro for the most part they are a good alternative. The do have a number of down sides. The tend to cause a bending of straight lines this in nature photography is usually not a problem. They can add so cromatic aberration but I found that even moderately cost ones were not all that bad. The can cause a ghosting so keep them clean and get multicoated ones if you can. Finally the resolution falls off drastically as you approach the edge of the frame. This can be a plus when you want to have a sharp image in the centre of your frame as it helps to separate this image from your background.

One of the things you have to watch when you use them is how you store the diopters. if you keep them in a cool camera bag and take add them to a warm camera you will have condensation and a really cool soft focus lens. Stacking two diopters seems to bring on this effect even more.

Where you don’t want to use them is in doing copy work as they will add all sorts of Salvador Dali stuff to your photograph.

Grant

wrote in message
Well, now that I have the A1 and can get in really close for macro shots, of course I want to get closer still. After buying the camera I can’t really afford a full-scale macro lens, so I was thinking about getting a set of Hoya diopters for now.

Does anyone here have any experience using them? What do you think of them?

Thanks, everyone!