Frankencamera

Canon Ti1 + extension tube + nifty fifty + canon 77mm close up lens

Yup, I actually spent $3 on an absurd looking 52 to 77mm step-up filter adapter to see if this would work.

Extension tubes are awesome by the way. They are the best $14 you'll ever spend.

The close up lens, not so much. I still don't know if it makes a difference.

Regardless, this is what you can do with it.

It goes without saying you need a ton of light for this to work. I took several photos next to a window in full daylight, and the only one that turned out was this one - shooting directly into the screen no doubt helped that situation. Even at f/11 or so my DoF was about .1 mm, making it extremely difficult to use.

Still, it has potential.

70mm

70mm allows me to bring in my favorite lens .. the 70-200 F/4. As a L lens, I expected it to walk away with it, but the 28-135 acquits itself very well.

To me theres no clear winner in the close up, but I do prefer the background blur effect of the L glass. Still, not bad at all.

50mm

Ok so 48-50mm, seriously there's got to be a way to see focal length on the LCD. Gotta check the manual again.

So this is the good old 18-55 Kit lens vs. the 28-135, vs. the ever popular Canon 50mm "nifty fifty"

I'm too lazy to photoshop this into a series of three side by side, so for all of these I did the 18-55 vs. the 28-135, and then had the "winner" go against the fifty. Embiggen to see metadata.

Edit: Ok so Blogger is broken and won't make the photos bigger. Trust me, the 28-135 wins. The second set of photos is still visible.

The 28-135 finally wins one! So it goes against the 50mm prime 1.8.

And wins that one too!

Ok honestly, the non-scientificness of my testing comes out here. Everyone knows the 1.8 50mm is tack sharp, and most likely it focused a quarter inch forward or behind - it's famously sharp, but also famously janky. Whatever, either way the 28-135 wins this round.

Edge of the frame shots - not much different.

28mm

A new contender! The Tamron bows out at 24mm, and in comes the Canon 28-135 f/3.5-5.6.

It's EF - kit lens vs. EF-S kit lens in the ultimate sharpness battle.

I should mention, I did indeed remember to turn off IS on these lenses while using the tripod.

The 18-55 kit kind of blows the 28-135 away, in both tests.

And yes, once again I was off on the zoom amounts.

24mm

Click to embiggen

Canon kit lens wins again - though I suspect I jostled the Tamron slightly in the first shot, it's way softer at the edge of the frame, and somewhat on the kitty.

I was somewhat inexact with my exact zoom (24vs 23mm).. it's actually really hard to be exact with nothing but the lens markings to go on. I don't claim that these are scientific tests; in fact, the lab bunnies may be responsable for jostling the tripod in the first place.

18mm

Click images for larger, and metadata.

All images shot on Canon Rebel T1i

18mm - 18-55 (Canon kit Lens) vs a Tamron ultrawide 10-24.

The first set is from the side of the frame. The Tamron shows a little more sharpness, but shows a lot of chromatic aberration where the kit lens has none.

The second set is from the center of the image. Neither are particularly good, but again the kit lens outperforms the Tamron. The full size image also shows significantly more distortion on the Tammy. I still like the lens, this kind of shooting isn't its strength though.