FZ1000 Close Up Options

The FZ1000  is a tremendously versatile camera.  With no additional equipment or accessories it can deliver good results with general photography, sport/action, wide angle, telephoto and much more.

This post is about close up options.

Several years ago  I  used to de- stress from a hectic workplace by going into the bush on weekends and photographing flowers of the Sydney region. I used a 35mm SLR with a macro lens, cable release, slow transparency film, tripod and  light diffusers which required at least one more tripod.  It was all very peaceful but setting up for a photo would take at least 15 minutes.

Fast forward  to the digital era and much has changed. But the basic operation of a modern DSLR is just the same as a 1960’s  SLR using film.  The greatest leap forward in versatility has been in cameras with a fixed zoom lens and this has come from new technology in the construction of zoom lenses, particularly the use of multiple aspheric elements. 

This has enabled lenses with a long zoom range and also the capacity to focus very close.  Both of these capabilities have been available on cameras with very small sensors (usually with 7.5mm diagonal)  for some time, but the FZ1000  adds a decent sized (15.9mm diagonal) sensor and very good picture quality to the equation.

At the same time cameras have acquired improved quality in the middle  ISO settings range and more capable focus and drive capabilities.

All these developments  have granted the intrepid close up photographer new freedoms and have encouraged new ways of working in the close up domain.

A traditional macro lens,  when used for close ups,  works within a limited  range of distances between the camera and subject. But the FZ100 introduces a new set of options.  Close ups can be had with the front element of the lens almost touching the subject or with the camera one meter from the subject or anywhere in between.

I will illustrate some of the options with reference to the photographs: By the way all the photos have been cropped for publication.

The picture above was made in my front garden.  The camera was hand held. RAW capture. Focal length E86mm, f8, ISO 125, 1/225 sec. I brought the camera as close as possible without provoking the red AF box and “too close” warning.  I used autofocus and a largish AF box (size 6/15).  There was some wind, causing the subject to move about and the insect was moving about, as insects are wont to do.  I set the Drive Mode to Burst M and fired off a series of short bursts of about 5 frames each.  Many of the resulting frames were unsharp but several were quite sharp and I selected one.

This is an example of a close up with the camera at an intermediate distance of about 250mm from the subject.

For the photo above the front element of the lens was almost touching the flower. I had to remove the lens hood. I usually find little use for this option which brings the camera so close it blocks light from the subject and would spook any little creature thereupon. But this little flower was mostly backlit so the light was not a problem.  The flower was up high, above my head on a small tree. It was a windy afternoon causing the flower to wave and bounce about all over the place.  It appeared to be an impossible challenge for a close up shot.

So I set Burst M (7 fps) and AF continuous, swung out the articulated monitor so I could view above my head and fired off a series of bursts. Of course most of the frames were blurred but some were acceptably sharp. This is the first time in my life I used Shutter Priority, Burst and AFC for a close up shot and it worked.

ISO 160, Shutter Priority AE, 1/640 sec at f5.6, Focal length E25mm. RAW.

Now we come to a close up shot with a camera to subject distance of  just over 1000mm.  The bees were working little flowers which flourish in the grass. I bent over at the waist, pointed the camera straight down,  used AF Single and Burst M, shooting in bursts of about 5 frames with RAW capture.  Of course plenty of the shots had either the bee or the flowers or both unsharp but quite a few got both the bee and flower acceptably sharp.

RAW capture, Shutter Priority AE, 1/640 at f4, ISO 125, Focal  length E400mm.

This  photo is of the same little flowers and bee (well maybe it was a different bee) but this time I set the Quality to JPG and enabled i-Zoom for a focal length of E800mm. I think you can see the RAW version is better.   In fact after making many hundreds of photos with i-Zoom I have come to the conclusion that I get better quality results with RAW capture, cropped in post processing.

This is another shot which would have been almost impossible in the good old days. The spider in its web was moving back and forth about 50mm  in the breeze making focus very difficult.  The web was back lit with the sun only just out of frame.  I put the camera on a tripod but left the head unlocked so I could change the camera angle.  I used Manual Focus as the AF would not focus on the spider  because the background was so busy.  Again I used Burst M with multiple bursts when the spider appeared to be coming into focus.

Nobody is about to enter this shot in a competition but the fact the FZ1000 enabled me to take any kind of photo at all in such complicated conditions is somewhat remarkable.

RAW capture, Aperture Priority, f8, ISO 250, 1/80 second, Focal length E93mm.

The last photo illustrates the use of a close up lens, screwed to the front element of the camera lens.

I used a 58mm Canon 500D which is a 2 element 2 diopter lens.  It is optically very good and enables real macro shots towards the long end of the FZ1000 range.  This permits a useful working distance between the camera and subject.

The photo was made in the early morning in low light. Hand held, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority f8, 1/160 second, focal length (as recorded by the EXIF data) E398mm.  The flower is about 25mm across.

Technically the close up lens probably offers the best close up performance of all the options covered in this post.  It provides the smallest angle of view, a useful working distance and good optics while retaining OIS, AE and AF.

But I hate it.  This is the ergonomics blog and the ergonomics of using one of the available good quality close up lenses are dreadful. I have a B+W slimline protect filter on the FZ1000 with no front thread. There are currently no 62mm double element CU lenses available new and the (very) old Nikon ones available second hand are often exorbitantly priced. 

Update: Thanks to Brad on the DPR Panasonic Compact Camera Forum I learned that Marumi makes a 62mm achromatic close up lens of +3 diopters  (Marumi 330).  I will investigate.

So to use the 58mm Canon 500D I have to remove the front filter from the FZ1000, put it in a clamshell container, take out the 500D, dig the 62-58mm step down ring from my bag, attach it to the 500D then finally attach the step down with 500D affixed onto the front of the FZ1000. The whole process is much worse than changing lenses.  Every time I do this I drop at least one of the (fairly expensive) bits and the whole process is so time consuming it is hardly worth while.  In addition I have to carry an oversized bag to contain the accessory bits and pieces.

Now IF someone made a good 62mm 2 element or aspheric CU lens I would consider getting a protect filter which does have a front thread and trying again. But for the moment I will pass on the CU option.

Hoya makes  single element 62mm CU lenses, which I might try at some stage.