Olympus 45mm vs Olympus 60mm macro for food photography

I remember your thread, and I basically said the 45mm f/1.8 specifically for food photography is kind of useless. But as that was merely a theoretical discussion, I got myself a Trader Joe's mini-pie out of the freezer and put it on a small plate.

This is the 17mm f/1.8 that you know and love. I can get the entire plate and more at eye level. And And for some reason, my tortie cat is licking my snack.

What an awful photo. Let's bring the 45mm f/1.8 in.

Oh, that looks a bit better. But is this honestly that much more useful? After all, you can easily bring your 17mm f/1.8 closer in. All the same, look at that bokeh!

Anyway, let's get as close as possible. Here, the Olympus 17mm is quite impressive.

The Olympus 45mm has to be better, right? Um... not so fast.

Hey, that looks almost identical to the 17mm. Sure, the pie looks less distorted because we have a larger working distance, but I can't fill it in the frame, so I have to crop if that's the detail I want to show off. See, as far as close up is concerned, focal length isn't important. Magnification is. Specifications say that the 45mm has a maximum magnification of 0.11x and 17mm has a maximum magnification of 0.08x, but honestly, I've used both these lenses extensively, and the 17mm focuses closer than the specs say, and in practice, it's as you see in these photos. The 17mm and 45mm pretty much have the same magnification in practice.

But what about the 60mm f/2.8? I have that lens, too.

That looks a lot closer, and we're not done.

Now, if you want to do serious food photography, wouldn't you agree? This is the shot you want. And we're still not done.

OK, we can still get closer, but now it's just getting silly.

These pictures are all out-of-camera JPG, no processing at all, and no cropping.