Engage with our used photography equipment partner MPB in a forum dedicated to giving members the opportunity to feedback their experiences or seek advice. Debating Dmitry on the topic of photography is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon — it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory.

The 30 mm is more suitable for larger objects, such as snakes curled on a twig, frogs, lizards, etc. The lens is well made and it gets a big plus for being splash and dust proof, but it does feel a bit cheap. And after three days of squatting like a frog over flowers and lying against muddy banks to capture dead leaves to the confusion and amusement of those arstops darker than the image centre and illumination is visually uniform with the lens stopped down to f/4 or beyond. Low angles can show off alien-like mouth parts and high angles can show off complex compound eyes or antennae. There are no external parts of the lens that move when you change focus (not a given among macro lenses).

Apparently it has a slightly finer sharpness, I’m just used to Autofocus a lot, which I’m not ready to give up just yet. I wrapped my head around the focus limiter and 1:1 shortcut, I started to understand the advantages of using both auto and manual focus, and I began shooting with a flash. Well, my dream came true when Olympus Europe kindly sent us a 60mm to test out for a week along with the new OM-D E-M1, 17mm f/1. Personally, I use a lens hood to support my lighting gear like my diffuser, even though it cuts down on my working distance.As I mentioned earlier, my gear includes a flash and light diffuser which sticks out quite a bit around the front of the lens.