# Raynox 250 Tests



## Ibn (Nov 19, 2003)

Saw this adapter in another thread and it piqued my interests enough that I picked one up on Amazon for testing purposes. 

Here are some pics taken with the adapter on a Nikon D3S with the 105mm VR lens (all handheld). No sharpening or processing was done on these pics. SB-800 used to light up the subjects at the same power settings. Pictures were converted from RAW over to JPG in CS5 and resaved at 800 px on the long end. 

From left to right: 105mm bare lens at 1:1; 105mm with Raynox set at infinity; 105mm with Raynox at 1:1; all at f/22









From left to right: 105mm bare lens at 1:1; 105mm with Raynox set at infinity; 105mm with Raynox at 1:1; all at f/22









At different apertures. Subject is the same as above, Elatine gussonei, with a ruler underneath (each tick mark is a millimeter). 









Additional thoughts: Nice little adapter worth its price. It's basically a spring loaded filter that fits over your lens like any filter without the need to screw it onto the lens. Only works with lenses that have 52-67mm front ends (which made the 105mm lens the only one that it works with since it has a 62mm front; rest of the lenses at 77mm). A step up/step down filter could probably be used, but I'm not sure if any vignetting would be present. Don't have a set of step up adapters to 77mm to test it on the 24-70mm f/2.8 or the 70-200mm f/2.8 VR to see how it would perform with a lens that doesn't go to 1:1. 

It does cut out light as anyone would expect as you stop the lens down for more depth (see pic above at different apertures). Flash was set to iTTL to output the necessary amount of light for the exposure. 

Depth and picture quality will be dependent on your base lens. You can't use the adapter by itself; it has to piggy back off a different lens. This will affect the overall costs of your setup, but the price for the adapter isn't bad at all. It's less than a set of Kenko tubes (can't find my Kenko to do a side to side comparo) and less than some filters that I've used in the past. 

Working distance is also affected by the base lens. With the macro lens, working distance was extremely close (~6" at infinity; 2.5-3" at 1:1 vs. 7" from the front of the lens at 1:1 bare lens) so to get the max magnification, you would have to be on top of your subject. 

It's a lot less unwielding than a full set of Kenko lenses and can be tossed on top of the 105mm VR for additional magnification. With that in mind, I'll most likely be keeping the adapter and once I can dig up my Kenkos, I'll add more pics.


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