So on Tuesday I posted a nice photograph taken with a very cheap camera with a cheap lens. It was a good image and one I am proud of. So do we need all this exotic glass. Well the answer is yes and no. There are alternatives, I know a wildlife photographer who gets great results with his cheap telephoto, because he uses bait to get the wildlife to come a lot closer to him.
The top photograph is a mint flower, these are tiny flowers which you would think would need a good quality macro lens to photograph, and that is what I used but there are alternative techniques. Close up filters is one option. These magnifying filters screw to the front of your lens magnifying the image. These are more difficult to get hold off now but they can still be found. The other option is a reversing mount. With this you can connect a cheap 50mm lens backwards onto your camera. This enables you to focus a lot closer and get frame filling images.
With the bigger megapixel cameras now available another option is to crop to make the picture.
