Field Review: FIT Close Up Lenses

Alex Mustard · Issue 59, Mar/Apr 2011 · pp. 28–31

Products mentioned: FIT +5 dioptre, FIT +8 dioptre, Nikon D7000, Nauticam housing, 105mm VR lens, Kenko Pro 1.4x teleconverter, Nikon AFS 1.7x teleconverter, Inon Z240 strobes, SubSea +10 dioptre, Macromate

Supermacro images are commonly defined as pictures shot at magnifications of greater than 1:1 (real life versus actual size on your sensor). Since most of the popular macro lenses will take us down to 1:1, we need an accessory to become super. There are many, many methods for achieving supermacro, indeed I have often joked that I want to write an instructional underwater photography book called “101 Ways To Supermacro”, with a century and one photos each taken with a different kit configurations. In simple terms there are 5 types of accessories that we regularly use to transform our macro lenses to super-status underwater: teleconverters, extension tubes, internal dioptres (used inside housing), external dioptres (used outside housing) and reversed lenses. It is fair to say that each method has it’s positives and negatives. So when I want to go really small I have tended to combine two o…