Mirrorless Macro

Phil Rudin · Issue 65, Mar/Apr 2012 · pp. 32–35

Products mentioned: Olympus 14-42mm F/3.5-5.6mm ED, Panasonic 14-42mm F/3.5-5.6 MEGA O.I.S, Sony E 18-55mm F/3.5-5.6 OSS, ReefNet SubSee +10, Panasonic 45mm F/2.8 MEGA OIS Leica DG Macro-Elmarit, Sony E 30mm F/3.5 Macro, Inon UCL-165M67, 10Bar macro ports, Acquapazza macro ports, Aquatica macro ports, Athena macro ports, Nauticam macro ports, ZEN Underwater macro ports

For the past two years or so I have been receiving E-mails from many underwater photographers worldwide asking my opinion on what I feel is the best macro lens option for the Micro-Four-Thirds and Sony Alpha NEX mirrorless camera systems. The magic number that everyone seems to want to get too is 1:1 or life-size, where the image captured on the sensor is the same size as the subject in the frame. The first thing that needs to be understood is that this number, 1:1 is not a single unit of measure. While you can find many different macro lenses from the 30mm to 200mm range that achieve a 1:1, reproduction ratio 1:1 still refers to the size of the image being recorded. At 1:1 on a full frame 35mm sensor the life-size image would be 24 X 36mm, on APS-C it would be 23.5 X 15.6 and on 4/3rds it would be 17.3 X 13mm. For this reason the smaller the sensor, the smaller the subject can fill the …