My personal macro and tele lens comparison

CrisPhoto wrote:

Hmmh, I will have a closer look at the 7-300 back-focus thing. I will focus manually and watch the contrast changing ...

And I should take a second look at the 75-300 with Meike rings. You seem to have good results ...

Yes. Let us know what you find.

With Close-Up lens, it is similar or slightly better than the 40-150. But above 150mm it is barely useful. For macro work, the 40-150 would be sufficient. But I bought the 300mm lens for other purposes.

My preliminary theory when it comes to close-up lenses is that they do worse the more of their area is actually utilized (with more spherical aberration as a result). Longer FLs (like the long tele zooms) and wider max aperture (75/1.8) are both bad from that point of view (big front elements in both cases). If you stop down the 75/1.8, it will of course do better (as it does) but you'll have trouble setting focus correctly with AF as well as MF (unless you try to MF in stopped-down preview, which is doable but rather tricky).

There might be more than this to the story as far as the 75/1.8 is concerned. It appears to dislike being taken out of its proper territory more than most other lenses. The theory might be more directly applicable to the 40-150 versus the 75-300 or 100-300.

With Meike rings, the zoom ring changes also the focus distance, quite confusing when coming from a Close-Up lens with constant distance. Therefore I tested the rings with primary lenses only...

Yes, you have to back out as you zoom in (with the magnification remaining roughly the same as a result). On the other hand, that may be an advantage at time. Great flexibility with regard to working distance.