Prices:$179.00
The world of the very small is a truly fascinating one. It’s all around us but we very rarely see it! It’s a world that’s very different from our own, a world where ants and insects rule like gigantic monsters, and where grains of sand become boulders! To manifest this tiny world and make it visible, you need a rather special lens. To bring this world into focus, you need a macro lens!
The 7 Artisans 60mm f2.8 Macro Mark 2 is a 1:1 magnification manual focus macro lens for APS-C bodies. It’s light and compact, and it’s very affordable too! This is the Mark 2 version of the lens; it replaces the Mark 1 version, which had a large extending section for macro shots – I’m glad to say the Mark 2 version does not have that rather awkward extending nose, making it rather easier to use.
It’s an entirely manual lens, with no electronic communication between the camera and the lens, so you’ll have to focus manually, using magnification or focus peaking. That’s no bad thing though – in a macro lens, working at very close distances, autofocus is not particularly helpful, in fact at macro distances, manual focus is a definite advantage, giving the photographer very fine control of the focus point.
Before we go further, let’s take a little time to think about what a macro lens actually is. A macro lens is usually defined as a lens that gives 1:1 magnification at its minimum focus distance. What that means is that at this distance, the size of the subject corresponds exactly to the size of the image it projects on the sensor. So let’s say you’re shooting an object with a height of 10mm. At the closest focusing distance of the lens, the image on the sensor of that object will also be 10mm – a direct correspondence of 1:1!
There aren’t many affordable choices in the world of macro lenses, either vintage or modern. There are quite a few vintages zooms that proudly wear the word ‘macro’ on their barrels, but these claims are often exaggerated, and most can’t offer any more than 1:5 magnification at the most. There are some very nice 1:2 macro lenses from manufacturers like Pentax and Olympus – I’ve used both of those and they’re lovely – but while they’re nice, they’re not true macro lenses!
So as you might imagine I was keen to try this lens out, and the more time I spent with it, the more Is got to like it. It’s an affordable, true macro lens, that can reveal another world that’s all around us, just waiting to be discovered!
Let’s look more closely at this rather special optic. It’s very nicely made and has an all-metal body with a matt black finish, and there’s a real feeling of quality in its manufacture. There’s a nice big focus ring at the back that turns very smoothly, as does the aperture ring – there’s clearly some nice engineering going on here, although my lens did have a little play in the focus ring from front to rear, so there’s probably room for tightening up the tolerances here just a little more.
Both focus and aperture rings have a fine milled finish giving effective grip, and the focus ring is twice the length of the aperture ring, making both easy to identify with your eye to the viewfinder.
Damping and the general feel of both focus and aperture rings are excellent and that’s important in a lens of this kind, as focussing at shorter distances becomes critical. The lens ring has plenty of movement at these really short distances to enable you to fine-tune your focus, allowing very fine control of your focus point. That’s a real plus point and means this lens can be easily and accurately focussed at very short distances.
This lens has a 60mm focal length, which gives an effective focal length of 90mm on an APS-C body due to the crop factor. Now that’s a really nice focal length that I find very useful in street photography, and most other photography too comes to that. But although you can use this lens on the street and make fantastic images in this setting, I don’t think street photography is this lens’s strongest suit.
This lens is optimized for macro photography and is at its best when photographing small subjects. Overall, the focus ring has a total movement of just under 180 degrees – and almost all of that travel covers the distance range from the minimum focus distance of 0.175 meters to one meter. There’s very little travel from one meter to infinity though – about five degrees or so – and that can make focussing tricky at longer distances, and it’s easy to go right past the focus point. I experienced this quite a few times while outshooting the lens, I missed some shots while trying to focus, and I soon learned that at longer distances a light touch is definitely required!
With practice though I soon became used to this lens’s foibles and characteristics, and I found I could focus accurately, although it’s not quite as easy as a conventional lens to focus at longer distances.
This lens is quite fast, with a maximum aperture of f2.8, so it has the excellent light-gathering capability. The aperture ring moves with the same well-engineered, smooth feel as the focus ring. There are no click stops so the aperture itself is infinitely variable, to allow easy fine-tuning of light and depth of field at close distances – a very nice touch!
Overall, this is a very nicely finished lens, but I do wish that the markings on the body were engraved rather than printed! In themselves, the markings are clear and prominent, but there’s a chance that with prolonged use they might fade or wear away. Engraving might increase production costs, but I’d certainly be happy to pay just a little more for an engraved lens.
Once I picked this lens up, I found it very hard to put down. Suddenly the world of the small was opened up to me, and what a world that is! The structure and the form that reveals themselves when you look closely are stunning! Simple flowers become alien landscapes, with huge and weirdly shaped structures dominating the view. School biology class suddenly came into my mind – I was in the land of stamen, anthers, and honeyguides, and it felt like I was right inside the flower! The form and structure of the interior of a flower is an incredible landscape, and it was now right before my eyes!
My macro subjects were almost all-natural, flowers, plants, and insects for example, and I found the natural world to be a rich source of images. It seems that the more you look into natural subjects, the more they reveal – new structures unfold and appear at different levels of magnification, and there seems no end to the detail they reveal – fascinating subjects indeed! It’s a different story with manufactured subjects though, and I found that the closer I looked at them, the less they revealed. They lacked small-scale detail and as a result, they didn’t make particularly interesting images; natural subjects seem to work much better.
Coupled with its longish focal length, that large aperture means that the lens can make some very nice background blur, but at very short macro distances, you’re unlikely to want to shoot wide open. At maximum aperture, the plane of focus is so thin that almost all the shot is a blur! You can make some very nice abstracts in this way, but you’ll need to stop down for most shots at close distances. I found that even at f5.6 the plane of focus was still very narrow indeed; f8 or even f11 are more useful aperture settings, expanding the plane of focus considerably. Of course, when you stop down, light entering the lens is reduced and if you’re shooting indoors there will be situations when you need to light your subject.
Camera movement can be a problem at these distances – a millimeter or two doesn’t make much difference when you’re 10 feet from your subject, but at macro distances, it’s the difference between nailing focus and missing it!
A tripod or another form of support can useful in macro photography because it holds the camera rock steady, however that assumes that your subject isn’t moving, which if you’re shooting outdoors is by no means guaranteed. Plants and flowers aren’t completely still unless the air is completely still, which doesn’t happen often, and insects are in continual movement, so I didn’t use a tripod for my outdoor shots. Instead, to achieve sharp focus I used what you might call a scatter-gun approach, taking multiple shots with as high a shutter speed as possible, knowing that some of those shots would have accurate focus. In fact, I found this approach worked very well, and I got some very nice shots using it, plus some happy accident shots that I really hadn’t expected! I used the same approach to photographing an ants’ nest, with several of the little creatures busying in and out, engaged in important ant business!
Use of a tripod with this lens works best inside, in a more controlled environment with no moving air. With both subject and camera absolutely still, the unwanted blur will not be a problem, but I found working without one gives you more freedom; that’s the way I prefer to work, and that’s how I shot the lens. For much macro photography, a tripod is not necessarily needed!
An area where a tripod is vital though, and another area where this little lens really shines, is in copying, or scanning, negatives. With a macro lens and a simple lightbox, you have all you need to make high-resolution, professional-quality scans of your negatives. No need to pay for scanning with development, and no need for an expensive, stand-alone film scanner. This lens gives you all you need! Even wide open this is a very sharp lens, but for maximum sharpness, I’d recommend stopping down to f 5.6 if you’re copying negatives. The lens is distortion-free, so straight lines in your negative will be straight lines in your scanned image too!
I love what this lens does with color. Personally, I like good, strong colors with plenty of saturation, and this lens certainly delivers them. They’re strong, vibrant at all distances, and at shorter distances, I was very surprised to see colors emerge that I didn’t know were there! Ordinary gravel, for example, of the kind that I’d walked over every day, shines and glows with colors and light, blue, grey, and gold, really quite stunning! Grass in a puddle after rain reveals unexpected and beautiful electric blues, hiding in plain sight, revealed by this extraordinary glass. Quite something! Foliage, petals, and leaves, up close, show delicate shades and hues that aren’t seen from our everyday perspective, but which appear like magic under the gaze of this very special glass!
It’s a very sharp lens indeed, and even wide open at f2.8 it’s extremely sharp, and it resolves a very fine level of detail. Of course, stopping down makes it even sharper, and it becomes bitingly sharp, although it’s so good wide open that there’s no real need, unless you’re shooting at macro distances, where the depth of field is tiny. At these very short distances, stopping down is pretty much compulsory, and if you’re inside you’ll probably need an extra light source too.
Whichever way you look at it, this is not a small lens. Not big, for sure, but not small. It’s fairly narrow; it takes 49mm filters, so in this dimension, it’s no bigger than many other lenses. However, it’s longer than I’d usually expect a 60mm lens to be, and initially, it felt a little large. It is a very specialized lens though, with a very specific purpose, and needs extra length to accommodate its construction. As a rule, I prefer shooting small lenses where I can, but other macro lenses are no smaller, and vintage lenses would need an adaptor, making them even bigger on the camera. It’s not a particularly heavy lens, so it really is easy to carry it around with you all day, without it becoming a burden.
I was a little surprised to find this lens makes really nice portraits, with lovely, soft background blur, and beautiful bubbles from point light sources. This really was quite a surprise – I hadn’t considered making portraits at all with this lens, but when a gentleman dressed as a pirate appeared in a restaurant I had to try it, and I was very pleasantly surprised! Rich color, very nice background blur, and a very slight softness when wide open produced a very nice image indeed!
Like any lens, this one has its foibles and peculiarities. It’s a great macro lens, with a true one-to-one magnification ratio. It’s nicely made and engineered and its multi-coated optics make very strong images. It’s most at home in the macro distance range but, with a little familiarity, it’s very effective for general photography too.
If you’re looking for an affordable, high-quality macro lens, this one is worth serious consideration.
