Behind the Lens

2.4A Closer Look: Diopters

I recently had a conversation on Facebook with a friend who was looking to purchase a new camera for a family member who makes jewelry. She was concerned about getting the best macro lens possible to photograph the details of the jewelry. While macro lenses can be fantastic, the category of “macro” covers a lot of ground that may or may not actually represent a lens with excellent close-focus ability. Good, real macro lenses can be very expensive and I suggested that she could purchase the standard kit lens with the camera, and get a set of diopters (also sometimes known as close-up adapters). These optical filters come in many size diameters and are often screwed to the front of a lens to allow it to focus increasingly ...