Panny 30mm macro practical on GM1?

Impulses wrote:

Impulses wrote:

Al Bond wrote:

OrdinarilyInordinate wrote:

How about trying this? Easy snap-on function to put on the existing lens. I'm not sure if it will be 100% compatible in terms of secure placement, but worth trying! Amazon's pretty good with returns.

http://www.amazon.com/Raynox-DCR-250-Super-Macro-Snap-On/dp/B000A1SZ2Y

http://www.amazon.com/Raynox-DCR-150-Snap-On-Macro-Lens/dp/B0007KS7D0/

I know a lot of people do swear by these lenses. However, they look to be be designed for larger lenses - so shouldn't cause vignetting - but it looks like it would need an additional adapter ring to step it down to the 37mm diameter of the 12-32.

I actually already have a Canon 250D screw on close up lens, which I never use. It might be worth getting a 37-52mm step up ring and try it on the 12-32.

If I understand the design correctly, the snap-on frame goes around the lens barrel or any protruding parts--not screwing into the filterthreading of the lens. The 150 might be easier to use in terms of available depth of field.

No, that's not correct, the clip on adapter goes into filter threads, it works essentially like a lens cap.

The achromat lends itself screws unto that clip on adapter and had a 43mm filter thread.

It is a bit like youg bloods buying a family sedan and screwing on bits to make it go faster. This can become a serious obsession. Eventually they will have spent enough money and effort to have made it a cost alternative to a car designed with more performance off the car lot. Hopefully the rest of the car is right up to coping with the extra performance. But of course the excercise is really in involvement and hopefully learning new skills rather than simply buying things premade and already in the box.

Snapping or screwing on mismatched accessory lenses is just a cheap way around buying the correct lens in the first place and at the same time taking a real punt on the performance. Accessory front fitted lenses can be quite good but really have to be optically matched to the native lens on the camera to work at their best.

That's a fair comparison, if you're really focused on macro anyway. Otherwise something like the Raynox achromats can be cheaper, more portable, and even more versatile. I've seen excellent results around here with the Raynox paired with everything from a Sigma 60mm to a Panasonic 100-300... Seems useful matching isn't really such a tough task.

I agree that it is a cheap way to get additional perfomance if you have not enough need for or not enough funds to justify the real thing.  From my own limited knowledge an add on lens on front of an existing lens can work quite well with little degradation of underlying lens performance.  The caveat seems to be that it is best if the extension lens has been designed specifically with the camera's existing lens in mind.  Therefore the quality of assistance rendered can vary from very acceptable to not so good.  This contrasts with tele-extenders between lens and camera which will always degrade the boosted lens capture quality by their very nature of needing to disperse the lens rays to do their duty whilst a focal reducer adapter has a reverse effect and will always improve the capture quality because it concentrates the lens rays by nature of how it works.  In this way it works the magic of an extra stop of light, becomes a wider focal length lens by using the full surface are of a lens designed a shorter adapter, and even improve the resolution of the host lens. Therefore they all in general terms must work best when used with a better host lens.