Macro photography with a cheap zoom lens

People who want to start macro shooting—or just try it a bit—often feel undecided when faced with so many options. I get a lot of messages about this. “Which lens should I start with?”, “Will this lens I have do the job?”, or “Is it necessary to spend this much?”

When answering these kinds of questions I recommend lots of things depending on the situation, but there’s one thing I’ve never recommended for macro: cheap zoom lenses!

In fact, there’s a lot you can do before turning to expensive macro lenses. I’ve written posts like that before. What’s different about this post is that I’ll be using those cheap telephoto zooms I never recommend. Since I have so many opinions, I’ll give the lens a chance and ask it to do its very best.

Tokina 80–250 Autozoom f/4.5

Tokina 80–250 This review came about a bit by coincidence. I had no intention of buying or using such a lens. But I was looking for a zoom lens because I wanted to make a binocular for my daughter. Other than working over a wide range and having its own tripod collar, I had zero expectations from the lens. There were many alternatives; this one happened to pop up. I’ll make this story a separate post.

Our lens is the Tokina 80–250mm. The same lens was also released under other brands. I don’t know its production date, but these are old lenses. The prices of most M42 zooms drop to next to nothing. In other words, in every case the postage costs more than the lens. The customs officers must not have believed the situation either, because they called me in for inspection and had me explain. When you turn it over in your hand, with its hefty body, it doesn’t look that cheap. Anyway, I explained, convinced them, and took the lens home.

As I said, the lens is M42-mount. So I attached it with an adapter. I have a nice adapter that focuses to infinity. I tried it first for normal shooting. With the aperture wide open, image quality is awful. It’s like we’ve just woken up and are peeking around with crusty, half-opened eyes. The image doesn’t recover until f/8. f/11 and f/16 are good, giving a fairly sharp image. Since I usually try everything that lands in my hands for macro, this time I started looking for the answer to how a macro could be shot with the most unsuitable lens. And this test could guide many telephoto zoom users.

Because the Tokina 80–250 has a minimum focusing distance of 6 m, it needs a helper for macro. As you might guess, that helper is the Raynox DCR-250. Thanks to the Raynox it will be able to focus at around 10 cm.

Supporting accessories for macro use Thanks to the universal adapter it comes with, the Raynox easily mounts to many lenses with different filter diameters. It attached to the Tokina without needing anything extra. However, to create quality lighting, you need to use a diffuser and a hood. Friends who don’t take these seriously—I suggest you think again.

The lens has a 67 mm filter thread. Among what I have on hand, the suitable hood has a 52 mm filter thread. But the Raynox’s outer thread is 49 mm. So, as you can see above, I solved it with a 49–52 mm step-up ring.

Paper cups are my favorite diffusers. I cut this one to fit the hood’s diameter and to do its job nicely. While doing this, you should first test and see at what distance the lens focuses during shooting. The diffuser should be designed to cover the subject at that distance.

Putting the pieces together. Once we assembled the parts, we got the setup above. The cut part of the paper cup is at the bottom because that’s where we’ll insert the subject. When framing, we need to leave enough room to move it forward and backward comfortably.

Macro shooting with the Tokina 80–250 The rig is exactly like this. It looks ready to fire. Our subject—a dead fly—was attached to the tip of a pin with glue. Unfortunately I couldn’t be very delicate with this step. After having problems in the first few attempts I got frustrated and applied a bit too much glue. That looked bad in the photo. But that’s okay—we’re testing right now, not making art.

When starting the shoot, the fly was slid into the cup and brought to the focus distance. Then a LED lamp was placed on each side to light it by shining onto the cup from outside (Ikea Jansjö desk lamps).

I set the framing to my liking. The zoom range of the lens is 80–250 mm. The look I wanted landed around 220 mm. Zoom lenses are usually sharper at mid-range focal lengths. So I could have gotten the best result from this lens in the 135–200 mm range, but I didn’t like the framing there.

I did the first test at f/8. In macro we know that if we stop down too much we lose detail due to diffraction. In fact, even f/8 counts as a danger line. I shot the entire series at f/8. But when reviewing the photos, I just wasn’t satisfied. Something was missing in sharpness. I went back to the camera.

I made two evaluations here.

• I lost my remote release. I ordered a new one right away, but I didn’t want to wait a month for this test. So I pressed the shutter by hand. Even if the delayed mode shoots after 2 seconds, could the vibration I created still affect the shot? - Because the lens optics are very poor, should I stop down more? Stopping down—and thus increasing the exposure time—would address both issues, so that’s what I did. I set the lens to f/16. I badly entered the diffraction zone, but there was nothing else to do. The exposure time, previously 1.6 s, increased to 4 s. Either the vibration died out during that 4-second exposure and that helped, or I ended up using the better central region of the optics. In any case, it worked. I reshot the series at f/16. It took 46 frames for focus stacking.

Fly shot with the Tokina 80–250 We’ll examine the photo in more detail, but at first glance seeing this result made me happy. It was not at all the unusable result I expected. I was glad because it’s another sign we need to put a stop to the gear race. If this result can be obtained with a “bad lens,” the difference between a “good lens” and the “best lens” may not be noticeable. As long as the light is used properly and shooting technique is respected.

Now let’s take crops from three different areas of the photo.

Center area detail The strongest area of lenses is the center. The sharpest image forms there. Despite f/16, the Tokina hasn’t done badly in the center. The detail is at a satisfying level.

Edge area detail You can feel the struggle here. The antenna has started to soften. Chromatic aberration is visible. Speaking of CA, this is the worst area for the Tokina 80–250. Even though I stopped down to f/16 and applied Photoshop CA correction, these blue-red fringes keep appearing and spoiling the colors. At wider apertures they rise to unacceptable levels. In macro we push lenses beyond their capacity. So what I’m saying gets magnified in macro work and becomes even more important.

Far edge area detail Moving even farther from the center, the lens really falls apart. CA increases in high-contrast areas. The bright glue here has pushed the CA effect to the maximum. And the hairs have become very soft. On top of that, with diffraction, there isn’t much detail left.

Conclusion

To summarize again, despite all these negatives, when I look back at the photo I see a result that’s not bad at all. High edge sharpness is found only in lenses made for macro or other specialty lenses. And we’re talking about one of the most unsuitable lenses possible.

We see that with good lighting and proper focus-stacking technique, macro can be done even with bad lenses. Most of us have much more modern telephoto zooms. Those will yield even better results. If the goal is to shoot macro, the best idea may be to start right away by supporting whatever you have on hand with the right accessories. There are people who set out on a whim, buy one of the best macro lenses on the market—the Canon MP-E 65—and then return it saying “this lens can’t shoot beyond a handspan” and “it doesn’t even have autofocus.” Getting to know macro first, developing technique and muscle memory, is more important than the lens.

By the way, I should add a warning. I said the lens is cheap, but the accessories I used aren’t that cheap. Tripod, head, and rail are very important. Without providing a comfortable, stable, and precise working environment, even if we have the best lens in our hands, we can’t make quality shots. It’s wise not to get your hopes up too high without considering the accessories.