Raynox DCR-250 - Adding Value To My Canon Powershot SX530 HS Camera

This Raynox DCR-250 clip-on lens - there's only one way of describing it: Amazing. No that's an understatement, make that Super Amazing. To show you what I mean, just looks at this picture that I have taken with my Canon Powershot SX530 HS in macro mode, uncropped but scaled down to fit in this page:

The subject, a Wasp Moth, barely fills 1/9th of the frame. Not much details to look at I must say. Cropping doesn't help much either.

Now compare the picture above with the following picture below. The same camera but with the Raynox lens attached, again uncropped but scaled down to fit in this page:

See why I am so excited with this lens now? A magnifying glass for my camera with the insect now filling about half the frame. The fine details, the furry bits around the insect, even the flower's pollen on the insect's feelers can be captured with my low-end prosumer point-and-shoot camera. A perfect value-add accessory to my camera.

If you are wondering, the noise level is quite acceptable since this is a 1/2.3 sensor camera after all. But this is not something that post-processing (with GIMP in my case) can't handle without losing much details.

There is something that I always wanted to photograph ever since I started taking close-ups but never able to: the compound eyes of insects. With the Raynox lens I can do it now. The picture below is the photo of the compound eyes of a Blow Fly. The size of this particular fly is about 1cm from head to tail by the way.

Now, there's some new skills and techniques that I have to pick up and learn in the coming weeks. With the Raynox lens attached, I can't just go around taking pictures by just pointing and shooting as I use to. It wouldn't work as the depth-of-field is very shallow. Just look at the picture of the fly above. Only the compound eyes are in sharp focus but the rest of the fly is blurry. It is said that the precision in focusing is measured in the order of millimetres when doing macros and close-up. From the picture above, I now realised that this statement is absolutely true.

Compounding this problem is that I take my pictures handheld. To steady my camera, I have to rest my hand carrying camera on something stable, which is impossible sometimes. Needless to say, the ratio of getting acceptable to unsatisfactory shots is quite low. Combining two or more different pictures during post-processing is the only option sometimes in order to get a good quality sharp final image. I know because that's what I did in one of my submissions to Dreamstime.

Lighting is also an issue since insects are sometimes found in the most unideal lighting situation. And camera's LCD glare is another problem.

All in all, fun, fun fun.

Note: A Canon filter adapter FA-DC67A (or compatible) is required because of the difference in lens diameter between the Raynox lens adapter and my Canon Powershot SX530 HS. Since I do not have deep pockets, I am using a third-party adapter from Proocam.

Update 27th January 2022

I don't use the Raynox DCR-250 lens with my Canon SX530 HS anymore these days. The zoom bar on the LCD screen of this camera went out of sync a few weeks after using it with the Raynox lens attached, and I suspect the Raynox lens is the cause of it. While zooming out, the zoom bar on the LCD display now goes from 5.0 cm -> 2.0m, then erroneously decrease to 1.5m, then 1.3m while still zooming out. I think the glass of the Raynox lens is too heavy for the stepper motor of this camera to bear. It will struggle when zooming in and out. Camera still works though and EXIF in pictures still shows the correct focal length, luckily.

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Buy Raynox macro filters from Amazon.com

(Note: An Amazon.com affiliate link)

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