Did I already mention that I'm a macro nerd? Well, this year I was photographing a lot of very small spiders and insects, and I was always fighting to get the necessary magnification. Even when using high-quality equipment like the Minolta 200/4 APO Macro G, combined with the Minolta APO 1.4× and 2× TCs, magnification often wasn't large enough. After cropping the images to the desired field of view, the loss of quality caused by cropping and by the TCs became quite noticeable. So I started looking for a high quality lens that allows larger than 1× magnifications without using TCs or other accessories. Fortunately Minolta is making such a lens, the 3×-1× Macro Zoom. In fact, Minolta was the first to make such a lens, and they remained the only one for about a decade. It was only recently that Canon joined Minolta by producing their MP-E 65 mm 1-5× Macro.

Finally, a 3×-1× turned up on eBay, and I bought it. Here are my first impressions:

New picture in "Landscapes" gallery

September 22nd, 2005 - 09:20:33 PM:

A new picture in the "Landscapes" gallery.

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New pictures in "Landscapes" gallery

September 7th, 2005 - 08:39:24 PM:

Added two new pictures in the "Landscapes" gallery.

Categories: Gallery • Readers' comments • Archive of all entries

New picture in "Landscapes" gallery

August 25th, 2005 - 08:01:50 AM:

A new picture in the "Landscapes" gallery.

Categories: Gallery • Readers' comments • Archive of all entries

New picture in "Misc" gallery

August 1st, 2005 - 10:30:10 PM:

A new picture in the "Misc" gallery.

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Minolta Flash Compendium expanded

July 17th, 2005 - 09:14:46 AM:

The Minolta Flash Compendium was slightly expanded.

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