Vivitar Series 1 +1 +2 +4 +10 Close-Up Macro Filter Set w/Pouch (52mm)

As the manufacturer suggests, these lenses work well for photographing flowers (when they bloom) and insects (when they smile). I have tested these close-up lenses with a Nikon AF-S DX Nikor 18-55 mm 1:3.5-5.6 G VR lens (the type supplied with many Nikon camera kits). This lens is fairly versatile, and it can focus to within approximately 6” of a subject even without close-up lens attachments. (Other cameras have lenses with 52mm threads which can accommodate these close-up lenses.) Setting the camera lens at its longest focal length (and greatest degree of magnification), with a +1 close-up lens a 2” subject will fill the camera viewfinder; with a +10 lens 1.5” subject will fill the viewfinder. The magnification with the other close-up lenses falls within these extremes. With a fixed focal length lens of normal focal length (circa 42mm) the degree of magnification with these close-up lenses will be slightly less. These close-up lenses can be used in combination for greater magnification, but any lens used in combination with the +10 lens must be attached to the back of the +10 lens. If you have been into photography for some time, especially in the pre-digital years, you may have a large collection of 35mm slides. Making digital copies of such slides confers many advantages. They can be leveled, and/or cropped, and their brightness, contrast, color, and sharpness can be modified. Thus, in some cases, the image on a digital copy may be a vast improvement over the original slide. And, being easily reproducible, multiple digital copies of an image can be assembled in separate groups relating to family, to travel, to art work, etc. Digital images can easily be shared with friends and family members. Various commercial slide copiers are available, varying widely in cost. But if you want a challenge, you can make a slide copy stand with which these lenses will work well. (See photographs.) I have copied slides with these lenses and find they give good results, with no loss of sharpness across the resulting digital images.

Using with a Nikon basic kit lens 18-55 plus a slide copying attachment to hold the film. They work extremely well for this. The image quality is great, their value compared to buying a macro lens is (price a new Nikon macro len)! Easy to use just screw in and the filters themselves their quality is fine. Been a professional since the 80's and a very pleasant surprise.

Very important to note is that these dont really magnify, these allow you to focus closer so they reduce the minimum focus distance allowing you to use your lens to take a focused photo from less distance. However that being said this is amazing buy for anyone with a camera as this let's you get closer and take more little detail shots for 10$ image quality is good in the center (avoid stacking, doesnt zoom any more with stack just decreases DOF). Important to note is that they do also reduce your DOF just like going to a lower aperture does, I personally have to use something like f5.6-f8 to consistently get a focused photo.

I tested these with both the 18-55mm lens my camera came with and a 55-300mm lens I have. They work great individually and even work well when all 4 are stacked together, however with that many layers of glass you cant expect magazine level quality. There is definitely a range from about 40-55mm at which they work best. Too low or too high and you'll get some darkness or blur at the edges. Also, it's imperative that each piece is as clean as possible, since the slightest smudge will be noticeable. Lastly, make sure you have a tripod as it's difficult to take extreme close ups with a shaky hand. All in all though, for less than $15 this is a great way to get into macro photography. **You also might want to consider getting an external flash, as the built in flash could be blocked by the lens when you're so close to what you're photographing.

They are inexpensive and well-made lenses for easily accessible macro photography. I’ve already used them on my Kodak Pixpro AZ528- though that is a bit redundant since the camera has a macro mode. They’re fun to mess around with, though. I plan to get a clip for my phone. All you need is a 52mm thread on pretty much anything and they’re largely compatible. The fit might be a bit awkward, so try to make sure you don’t wear down your threads if you’re taking them on and off frequently.

I bought this close up lens set to put on my camcorder to play with shooting macro. The threads worked smoothly and the lenses do magnify. Only the center of the scene is fairly clear with this set, but by no means are the images high quality. I'm glad I bought the lens set because they taught me that I enjoy macro. Since using this set I also experimented using extension rings for shooting macro on my DSLR. Since I want to do macro and want as high a quality as I can afford I'll keep using the extension tubes until I can buy a dedicated macro lens. I get much better image quality by using a reversed DSLR camera lens than these lenses. I suspect that some other brands which cost more will give higher quality than this set I picked.

The 4 macro lenses arrive in a well-printed shelf box containing the 4 lenses and a velcro-closure pouch with 4 pockets, one for each lens. The lens mounts are high-quality precision made with a male screw and a female screw that allows the photographer screw more than one lens into the camera to achieve, potentially, up to +17 diopters The formula to convert from Focal Length in mm to diopter is: Diopter = 1000 divided by Focal Length in mm The 10, 4, and 2 diopter lenses were within 10%. The "flattest" lens, the 1 diopter, was 19% low. What is the actual impact of diopter accuracy while using the lenses? Not very much. You try these auxiliary lenses singly or in combination until you can fill the central part of the frame with what you are after. My conclusion is that these lenses are high quality, as you would expect from Vivitar, at a very reasonable price.

Amazing!!! Captured my baby jumping spiders beautifully!

Makes close up shots on the ace pro more visually appealing. Action cameras have hard time focusing on objects within certain ranges so this eliminates that problem.

buen producto, apenas empiezo en la macro foto, hice algunas pruebas y todo en orden, tal como marca la propaganda

GOOD

TLDR, they're mediocre. Not a bad purchase for $20, and certainly useable, but they also certainly have issues. I primarily got these to use on my GoPro 10 with a 3rd party cage that allows 52mm filters to be attached. My intended purpose was really just to experiment with the ability to adjust the focus of the GoPro's fixed-focus lens. They do cause background blur, but the in-focus area is very close to the camera - around 20-30cm, and it's hard to tell what's in focus while filming so I probably won't use them for this purpose. I also tried them on my DSLR, where I found many lens+filter combinations had issues focusing on anything at all. My closest minimum focus lens, an 18-55mm that can focus as close as 0.25m, had the best results. It was able to work with the +10 filter, to get maybe 15-20% closer to the subject, and it seemed to yield a slightly shallower depth of field. This is proably the best case scenario. The optical quality of these lenses isn't great. They are very reflective, so while you can screw in more than one to combine their effects, if there's any light source pointing towards the lens you get ghosting and glows and flares very quickly. They have a pretty significant warping effect around the edges, which is clearly visible even with the fisheye wide lens setting on the GoPro. The photo of the back of my pocketwatch against my computer screen shows that while it can enable closer focal distance, the highlights can cause ghosting quite easily; weirdly the bottom left of the pocketwatch has been washed out the most by the highlight in the top right. In the photo of the funky water bottle you can see the warping more clearly, and you can see the significant image defects caused by the lens reflectiveness in a backlit shot. Both of these were stills taken from GoPro footage on linear mode, so there's no fisheye warping from the GoPro itself. Photos from my DSLR with the macro filters were less impacted by these defects.

These Close up Filter use only on Manual Mode .not auto mode ...