Marco Aries

If you have a camera, at some point you have tried to shoot macro, maybe by holding a magnifying glass in front of the lens or maybe with some extension tubes. I know because I’ve done the same. But this time I have a proper 1:1 macro lens to show you. Let’s take a closer look. The lens is made mostly of plastic, it weighs around 420g, it is 74 to 100mm long and it has an external diameter of 72mm, with a 62mm front thread. The iris has 7 blades, the aperture is clicked and it goes from f2.8 to f32 without half steps. The focusing ring is rubberized, it turns 160 degrees and the minimum focusing distance is 21.9cm, granting a 1 to 1 reproduction. It uses a screw drive autofocus, it has a manual auto selector and a switch to limit the focus range from 30cm to infinity. It has a Nikon F mount. The lens is well balanced when focused to infinity, but it becomes front heavy when extended. Overall, it is fairly light, so it’s not a problem. What can be annoying is that the focus goes from 2m...

At a first glance you would think this is a vintage lens but technically it’s not and you can buy it right now from the Zenit store. Specifically, the original Zenitar-1K was released in 1988 but the 1N and 1C were released in 2016 with an updated optical design. The lens is made of metal, it weighs 580g, it is 59 to 70mm long and it has an external diameter of 78mm, with a 72mm front thread. The iris has 8 blades, the aperture is clicked and it goes from f1.4 to f21 with half steps. The focusing ring is textured, it turns 160 degrees and the minimum focusing distance is 85cm. It comes with either Canon Ef or a Nikon F mount. The lens is definitely chunky and well balanced, the controls turn smoothly but the focus ring is a bit stiff. Wide open it can be quite soft even in the center with visible blooming. By f2.8 it gets much sharper, with more detail and only falling off a bit in the corners. By f8 it gets very sharp all over the frame, picking up even more detail. And here’s a sampl...