If you don’t own a Macro lens, one option that is often more affordable and can do somewhat of the same job are Macro Close Up Filters. What these filters do is act like a magnifying glass while working in conjunction with your lens and sensor. Years ago, they weren’t such great quality but over the years they’ve become better and better. To use them, you simply take the filters and screw them onto the front of your lens. The cool part is that they come in different magnifications and can be stacked one on top of the other for an even closer zooming effect. It will take a whole lot of them to get into a 1:1 ratio with many lenses, but the filters are also meant to be a more affordable alternative to a macro lens.
Photographer Mike Brown demonstrates this and how they’re used in his video after the jump. Mike shows us just how close in one can get when trying to focus on a very small and detailed subject. When he stacks of the filters on top of one another, he finds that he can’t even see the subject that he purposely placed in back of his main subject.
