What Happens When You Combine Too Many Close-up Filters?

Combining close-up filters can be a quick and easy way to improve the close up focus of a standard lens, and you may think that you can simply keep adding them to get closer and closer to your subject. But what if you add too many close-up filters? 

Above you can see the effect of adding a HOYA Close-up +1 filter, then adding a HOYA Close-up +2 filter, then adding a Hoya Close-up +3 filter, and taking a shot each time a filter is added, and the results look good, with the camera able to focus much closer to the subject.

When we start adding more close up filters, as shown below, we start to see chromatic aberations (cyan and magenta lines around the watch), but with the HOYA Close-up +4 added results are still quite reasonable, with a sharp image produced. After this we even add another HOYA PRO Digital +3 close-up filter, to get even closer to the subject, with a close focusing distance that resembles what you would get from a dedicated macro lens. 

With high quality filters, of the same brand, it is possible to get good results, particularly if you want to get as close to a subject as possible. 

Close Up Filters Combined Part

We decided to see how close we could go, and added another close-up filter, this time a generic +3 close-up filter (giving a total of +16), and as you can see from the photos above, the image quality drops noticeably! We tried to stop down the lens to f/8 to improve image quality, and whilst the image has become sharper, the poor image quality remains, particularly into the corners of the image when using this additional budget close-up filter.

Closeup Filters Rear Screen

You can find more guides on how to use filters in FilterZone.