Lens suggestion

mount evans wrote:

Builder467 said the following in the Macro forum:

"The typical extension tube set for m4/3 is 10mm+16mm. Add them to anything at 40mm to 45mm and you'll reach about 1:1.5 at minimum focus. A lot of the short and long zooms cover that range.

Before getting a macro lens, I used them a lot with both a 14-45 and 45-200. I still use them now and then. They don't work well with short primes.

That's about the least expensive way to get into macro."

So, get a cheap set of "automatic" extension tubes (i.e., the ones that have electrical contacts) and try them with your kit zoom at 42mm. Bam, macrophotography for $29.95. The tubes do not magnify per se, but they allow you to get closer to your subject that you could before and still focus. If the quality isn't great, maybe try getting a lens in the 40mm or longer range that you were thinking of getting anyway, and try it with the extension tubes.

Finally, there's the legacy lenses. They need to be completely manual focus of course, but there are a lot of possibilities. Older, MF lens might be cheap. Once you have a m4/3 adapter for that lens, you can use the extension tubes on the m4/3 end. Again, maybe inquire in the Macrophotography forum about old manual focus lenses that are good for macros.

The Hexanon AR 55mm F3.5 Macro is a Konica lens, now orphaned. Konica lenses were well respected in their day.

Thes lenses are now available on eBay for about $70 USD. Some of them are sold with the Konica extension tube as a kit. (I have one) On an M43 camera, the focus and the aperture are of course manual.

A Konica to M43 adapter is about $10 USD on ebay.