Do I need a macro lens?

[Altaholic]

Greetings,

One of my other "hobbies" is building scale models. Anything race related(F1, WRC, MotoGP, etc) and mostly in 1/20th or 1/24th scale which are about 10 inches in length with the occasional 1/43rd scale(pretty small) and 1/12th scale(pretty big) mixed in. Curious as to whether I would need a macro to photograph these. Thoughts? TIA.

Glenn

 

[shingfan]

you have lense that you can try..........if you feel that the models appear big enough inside the frame.....then you dont need a macro......if it is not giving you enough details with your given lense....then you need a macro

 

[Sw1tchFX]

If you're current lenses don't focus close enough, than yes.

 

[Altaholic]

I was being a bit lazy and the thought came to mind so I thought I would throw it out there. I will do some test shots and see how it looks with my current lens' and go from there.

Glenn.

 

[fmw]

You probably do not need one to shoot an entire model and you probably do to shoot close up details of a model.

An option is to find an achromatic closeup lens. Canon makes good ones. You can afix it to the front of your lens to allow it to focus more closely and you wont't lose any light. Stay away from the single element "closeup filters" which are soft because of chromatic aberration. I used to shoot commercial closeups in the studio on medium format with an achromat. They work really well.