Superzooms have a fantastic zoom range as it is, but as with everything you buy, you always end up wanting more.
A conversion lens gives you that extra that you need for a reasonable price. These can be bought for both bridge cameras (advanced superzooms and compacts) as well as DSLR’s.
The fz-28 already has a rather large zoom range. Its macro mode allows you to focus as little as 1cm away when using the wide angle (no zoom) and 1 meter away at full zoom. This is great for taking photos of flowers. For example:
It also has a great telephoto of 486mm (35 mm equivalent) allowing you to take great close ups of wildlife such as this
But still you will want more. You see these pictures of insects taking up the whole frame and wonder how on earth that shot got taken. You see full frame pictures of baby animals that should be easily startled.
Well for these types of shots you need a few things. Firstly, and most importantly, you will need a macro lens for the super small and tele converter for the extra zoom.
First lets talk about my favourite of the two, the macro lens. This is possibly one of the best and most fun bits of kit you can buy for a camera because the difference it makes is huge. The macro lens i bought is called the Raynox 250. It simply clips on to the front of various size lenses so has no screw thread. Some cameras (such as the fz-28) will need an adaptor tube to fit this, but its worth it. The adaptor tube is called the DMW-LA3 E. This same tube will allow you to fit the Tcon-17 tele converter as well.
The raynox 250 macro lens will do a few things.
-It will magnify your subject by about 3 times
-It will massively reduce the depth of field. So much so that it will only be a few mm big
-It will make your focusing distance about 11-13 cm away depending on the zoom.
Don’t be fooled by the fact that the focusing distance gets increased compared to using full wide angle without this lens where you get a 1cm focus distance. As its wide angle you still see a lot of the frame. On the fz-28, as you zoom the focus distance changes. At full zoom it is 1 meter away and will give a similar close up as using 1cm away at the wide angle. With the raynox attached its about 12cm at FULL telephoto. Mixed with the 3X magnification the lens gives you really do get extream close ups.
Before i show you some examples this next image is about as close as you can get with the standard lens. This doesnt include massively croping an image as that would make the image tiny and fairly unusable for anything but the web. This next image was still cropped a lot but it remains a fairly usable size
That isnt a bad result of course. You get a nice enough picture and you can pic up the detail on the bees wings.
But compaired to the following, this is nothing. These are some of my favourite macro shots i have taken recently using the Raynox 250.
As you can see you can get incredibly close to your subject with one of these lenses. The detail you can pick up it quite incredible. From these pictures you can see what i was talking about with having a very small depth of field. In the first picture of the fly you only get the flys head in focus. That is at full zoom. You can increase the depth by reducing the zoom and also by closing the aperture but dont expect it to increase by much.
Other things you need to know about using a macro lens is that you really need a lot of light and you need to be stable. I tend to get myself into a possition where i can rest my elbows on something, otherwise you rock back and forwards to much making it incredibly hard to get a shot in focus. I also only do this on a sunny, bright day to get enough natural light. You can use a flash but the light looks very unatural and the final image is never as pleasing to the eye. Try and stick to shutter speeds at a bare minimum of 1/125. You will be suffering from camera shake (even with image stabalisation) at this sort of magnification and you need to counter it with as fast a shutter speed as possible.
The most important tip you will need to know is this. Move slowly. If you move slowly the bugs dont even seem to know your there. Sudden fast movments will send them packing. The fly head shot i got, i managed to move a chair and sit next to it simply by moving slowly.
Now onto tele converter lenses. The one I own is the TCON-17. This gives you a 1.7x magnification. It has a few other advantages as well as some disadvantages. Lets get the bad stuff out the way first. Teleconverters eat up light. You will need very good light to get decent shutter speeds. If you only plan to use them on a sunny day then this isnt really a problem but in low light they are a bad idea as cameras struggle enough in those situations already. The other downside is that almost all teleconverters will have soft edges to the images. Luckily i have found the TCON-17 to not suffer to badly from this. The center and even most the frame stays pretty sharp with only the edges being slightly soft, not really enough to cause to much of a problem but the issue does exist. One extra thing to note is that you will of course get even more camera shake. Make sure your in a stable position when using one.
Now for the good. You increase your zoom by 1.7x. That alone is pretty cool. This turns my 486mm zoom into a HUGE 826mm zoom. The other bonus i have found is that i can use it to increase the max shutter speed of the fz-28′s max zoom without the teleconverter. That sounds confusing but i shall explain. The fz-28 has a max shutter speed of 1/2000 at the a wide angle. But this decreases to 1/1300 at the max telephoto. And that only if you close the aperture. If you set the aperture to be wide open (4.4) then this decreases to 1/1000. This is still fairly fast but for subjects such as sports and wildlife its nice to be able to get to about 1/1500 to really freeze the action. So heres what i found out. With the Tcon-17 attached i can set the camera to 10x zoom. this will give me about the same as 18x zoom without the tele converter attached. Becase the camera isnt zoomed as much it now allows me to shoot at 1/1300 at its max aperture (and its aperture is larger as its not as zoomed, about 3.7) and 1/1600 if you close the aperture up a bit. This is a nice shutter speed increase for sunny days when light is in abundance.
So thats the pluses and minuses. Now for the example shots. Ducklings are nice to shoot but to get a full frame shot of them bobbing in the water is hard if you dont fancy a swim. What you need is more zoom. Well heres one i got using this lens.
and heres one of a duck splashing about in the middle of the pond
without the lens i wouldn’t have got as close and therefore not as much detail.
Some people could argue that you could just use the EZ (extra zoom) function to get closer but that isnt really the same. Cameras that offer this extra zoom in exchange for less mega pixels are basically just cropping the image and it isn’t real zoom. Its a nice feature but if your after maximum detail its best you stay clear. Also its nothing you cant just do your self more accurately in post processing later on.
Out of the two lenses i would highly recommend a macro lens to anyone. It gives you a totally new area of photography you can cover and turns your back garden into a jungle of insects.
The teleconverter is also fun and a good purchase but it is used a lot less as more often than not the normal (albeit large) zoom range of this sort of camera is more than enough.
Here are the amazon links to the 2 lenses and the adaptor tube.
Adaptor tube for panasonic fz-18 and 28 (and i imagin the new fz-38 as well)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Panasonic-5025232438402-DMW-LA3-E/dp/B000ULPK2C/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1250001878&sr=8-4
The Tcon-17 1.7X tele converter
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Olympus-Conversion-TCON-17-SP-550UZ-C-5050/dp/B0002HNR6A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1250001878&sr=8-1
and lastly the pick of the litter. The Raynox 250 macro lens
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Raynox-RADCR-0250-DCR-250/dp/B000A1SZ2Y/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1250004984&sr=1-1
