G2 plus Macro = Nice

Starting to love my G2 a little more than my GF1. Spent some time in my studio shooting some of the Calla Lilies that were up today. Did a few in large format film, but did a lot with G2 and the 45mm macro, and then Nikon D700 with 60mm macro. Just pushed out a few prints from both the Nikon and the G2, with the shortest dimension matched at 20 inches, and other than the difference in image dimensions, there's no visible difference in a print of that size on luster paper.

Good images

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Nice pics.

I've been asking over in the beginners forum about m4/3 and 'kit lens' ability to do macro (or just close up), as I was concerned that it's obviously not going to be easy out of the box like for ex a simpler camera like LX3 would.

Which leads me to ask, this 45mm macro lens you are using, is it an official 4/3 panny lens or a legacy+adapter and what kind of price are we talking?

If I want usable close focus/macro on my G2 (if I buy one) it seems I'm going to have to pay almost as much as the camera itself to buy the leica macro lens for the G system?

thanks

Reality Faker said:

Nice pics.

I've been asking over in the beginners forum about m4/3 and 'kit lens' ability to do macro (or just close up), as I was concerned that it's obviously not going to be easy out of the box like for ex a simpler camera like LX3 would.

Which leads me to ask, this 45mm macro lens you are using, is it an official 4/3 panny lens or a legacy+adapter and what kind of price are we talking?

If I want usable close focus/macro on my G2 (if I buy one) it seems I'm going to have to pay almost as much as the camera itself to buy the leica macro lens for the G system?

Click to expand...

The Olympus 14-42 kit lens does pretty good close-up, but no real macro(1:4). Not sure what magnification the Panasonic 14-42 kit achieves. There are also other lenses, not as expensive as the 45mm in the regular 4/3 line-up. The 35mm (1:1 reproduction) is less than €200 now, and the 50mm (1:2) with adapter still ends up cheaper than the 45mm.

The 70-300mm (1:2) Olympus lens also allows good macro shots with a longer working distance than the 35mm. It now costs around €300.

Then, there's lots of old macro lenses on the market, ranging in price from tens of Euros to several hundreds.

Hope this helps...

Damien

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Nice? these shots are great! Thanks for sharing.

Damien
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Below are two closeup images taken with my G1. The first is with the 45-200 mm lens and the second with the 14-45 mm lens.
Richard

Thank you very much both, very helpful. And the g1 example with kit lens is very useful for 'showing me' what a similar kit lens can do.

And yes I meant GREAT shots, not nice

new ones! also with a 45mm PL

I did some fiddling with my Nikkor macros - and I have some exotics, like macro lenses made to be mounted on bellows and only 1:1 and closer - but the whole non-m4/3 drill of stop down metering and open up to focus then stop down made me crazy.

The panny/leica 45mm macro is great. The only downside is that I've developed a style over the years with my Nikon gear that was hugely stopped down for maximum DOF, and with fast shutter speed, hugely stopped down, and flash, allowed me to isolate subjects at mid day like they were shot in black studio backgrounds. Well, with m4/3, you can't stop all the way down and get reasonable (meaning, you can fix it with unsharp mask) sharpness. I have some ladybug images as close as I could focus the 45mm macro, and in order to have enough DOF to shoot and get the whole ladybug in focus plus just enough of the surround to give some context, I lost way too much sharpness to diffraction.

It is what it is. Great macro lens, just not the right tool for hugely stopped down images.

I envy your white calla lily. My white ones this year have been hit with every defect possible, and this is the year when I had a large sensor infrared camera ready to work with... your white calla is textbook perfect.

Very nice shots.