When considering the acquisition of an interchangeable lens for a single-lens camera, we not only look at the reviews of lenses and word-of-mouth reports and examples of photographs that abound in magazines and on the Internet, but also compare specification data this way and that.
In reality, however, I do not have enough knowledge or experience to understand the specifications.
The most troublesome points for me personally are the “Minimum Focus Distance” and “Maximum Magnification”. This is supposed to tell you whether or not you can “get close and take a big picture,” but from the perspective of a perpetual beginner, it is a specification item that is hard to grasp and feel.
So, I held a “close-up and large photo” comparison contest with my L-mount lenses against a 500-yen coin on my desk. (Please don’t give me hate speech about forcing me to look for a blog post that will not require me to leave my house in July, when it is extremely hot. The truth sometimes hurts people.)
The first batter was the LUMIX S 24-105mm F4 (minimum focus distance 30cm, maximum magnification 0.5x)
You can get as close as 30cm across the entire zoom range, so the largest image you can get is when you get close at the telephoto end, which is 0.5x (so-called half-macro).
I have to make an excuse that I was shooting hand-held and wandering around, so I may not have been able to get as close as I wanted to (the same excuse is necessary for each lens, but I will omit it below).
Let’s compare the half-macro image of ↑ with the half-macro image of ↑ as a rough guide.
The second batter is LUMIX S 20-60mm (same 15cm 0.43x)
This lens only allows you to get as close as 15cm at the wide-angle end. I thought I got as close as I could with the lens hood off, but it still wasn’t close enough when I looked at it later like this. I probably could have gotten closer and taken a bigger picture.
At the wide-angle end, you can shoot at a maximum of 0.43x, and as you zoom in from there, the distance to focus gets further away from the subject, so the optical magnification increases but the picture you can take becomes smaller… I see what you mean, I was not aware of that until now (explosion).
Third is the LUMIX S 14-28mm (15cm 0.5x)
This is a super wide-angle zoom that lets you get as close as you want and is half-macro at the telephoto end. I have not been able to make much use of it so far, but I have realized once again that it seems to be quite worthwhile.
Next are the three SIGMA i-series single focal length lenses.
I realized after comparing them in this way that these lenses are not good for “close-up, large-format photography”.
First, the SIGMA 90mm F2.8 DG DN (50cm 0.2x)
Then the SIGMA 50mm f/2 DG DN (same 45cm 0.15x)
Tiny (lol).
SIGMA 17mm F4 DG DN (12cm 0.28x) This lens is supposed to be able to get very close, but like the 20-60mm (see above), I was too scared to get close enough.
However, even if you get as close as you can, the maximum magnification is not as high as that of the LUMIX S 20-60mm at the wide end, partly because the lens itself has an ultra-wide angle of view.
Finally, as a comparison, here is a shot taken with a K-mount macro lens with an adapter attached.
Please see the TAMRON 90mm F2.8 outgoing picture.
After taking my own pictures and lining them up like this, I finally got a sense of what it means when the “minimum focus distance” and “maximum magnification” are different. Please forgive me for being a perpetual beginner, but I’m a few laps behind the times.
Also, I should have polished the 500-yen coin more nicely before taking the picture anyway.
