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Better of Two 25mm Macro Lenses for the Subject?
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PostPosted: Wed May 08, 2019 8:20 am    Post subject: Better of Two 25mm Macro Lenses for the Subject? Reply with quote

This is not much like the usual kind of topic here but it may be of interest.

I have two 25mm lenses for x2.5 to x5 (giving x5 to x10 with m4/3 crop). Putting it another way, the FOV is from 7mm to 3.5mm wide before any normal cropping.

I found, with a recent session where the subject was a tiny fungus that, with similar lighting and magnification, the Photar 25mm was a bit more contrasty and resolved slightly more detail than the Laowa.

This time, I did not set out to make a comparison. The two sessions were not on the same day and one was flash, the other daylight. The apertures also varied but were mostly f11. (Both lenses are fully manual so EXIF data does not record apertures).

The first session, with the Photar, was with single flash behind the front of the lens. To my surprise, there was quite a lot of very diffuse flare and noticeably-reduced contrast. In post processing, I had to do a lot of manipulation (brighntess, contrast, etc.) to get the results which were still not to my liking, not least the colur shift.

Olympus EM-1 (manual mode), Leitz Wetzlar Photar 25mm f2.5 macro at f11?, single TTL flash, hand-held with support.

I decided to to shoot again, this time with the Laowa, which I have used very much more than the Photar for such a subject. I also decided to used sunlight rather than flash. The results had none of the above faults. Ideally, I would have repeated this with the Photar, to make a true comparison but I had not the time.

Olympus EM-1 (manual mode), Laowa 25mm f2.8 2.5x-5x ultra-macro at f11?, sunlight, hand-held.

Just to clarify: All I wanted was some good images. Any comparison was unexpected but the findings are useful for the future choice of lenses for such subjects.

At the moment I cannot identify the subject. At first glance the appearance is that of fruiting bodies of a slime mould. However, the black structures, including stems, do no fit and are more like those of an Ascomycete fungus such as a Hypoxylon species. More study is needed.

Photar, flash, ISO 250




Photar, flash, ISO 250




Laowa, sunlight, 1/50 sec, ISO 800



Laowa, sunlight, 1/100 sec, ISO 1600




PostPosted: Wed May 08, 2019 3:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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