Closer solutions

Closer solutions

Under my work table, right next to my leg as I type, is a big cardboard box that I hadn’t looked in for maybe 13 years until a few days ago. It’s full of things that I decided I don’t need very often, so while some may be thinking ‘skip’ and ‘hoarder’ I feel a glow of satisfaction at the excellence of my judgment.

Various things in there, some of them probably worthy of a blog some time – as was the first thing out: a leatherette case a couple of inches across and an inch and a half thick, which turned out to contain a Hoya Zoom Close-Up Lens. It’ll be one of those things found in an ‘all items £1 or £2’ box in a camera shop 20 years ago, and never got round to using.



A ring at the back unscrews with a left-handed thread to allow you to change the camera lens fitting: I don’t have a spare one, but the 55mm thread ring that’s attached fits a lot of my older lenses, so I couldn’t resist trying a few shots (I used it with an 85mm f/2.8 Sonnar attached to an Alpha 7 with a cheap adaptor).

Downside: even with the long focus lens, the device will get you uncomfortably close to the subject – the zoom is calibrated by distance, from around half a metre to 0.1 metre. Apart from the awful quality of any extreme closeup lens (the now-common 4-lens sets typically include a +10 Dioptre which brings you as close, and is just as blessed with aberrations), this is as uncomfortably close as fellow-travellers on the London Underground in a 2019 rush hour, and the camera and lens get in the way of the light.



If you want to shoot this close with any regularity, extension tubes, bellows and a macro lens will be useful and vastly more convenient. Many macro lenses are long focus, and part of the reason for this is that having the camera further from the subject means it’s not in the way. The Yashica dental lens (it really exists – there can’t be many around, though) was 200mm so that images of back teeth didn’t actually require the dentist to put a lens and ringflash inside the patient’s mouth to shoot molars…



But if you just fancy some fun, and pictorial results, there are plenty of these lenses on eBay for around £10-£15. Actually, make me an offer, and make Mrs D happy…