Some time ago I was gifted a set of Vivitar Series 1 close-up filters in a size suitable for my Pentax 645 system. They’re simple, uncoated single element glass diopters, in +1, +2, +4 and +10 strengths.

With the 150mm lens, these can get you pretty close to your subject. Needless to say, you want to do this on a tripod. One nice thing about these is that they don’t affect the amount of light at the film plane. The downside is that they aren’t as sharp as a dedicated macro setup. But I have to be honest here, I’m overall impressed with the results so far. They can even be stacked, to a point (not all will fit together as the +4 and +10 bulge out quite a way, also image quality will really suffer with all those uncoated air-glass interfaces).

This shot was made using Ilford’s Pan-F Plus, a traditional style slow speed film. It produces beautiful tonality and fine grain, at the expense of slower shutter speeds and a tendency to get very contrasty, very quickly. But it makes very pleasing prints. In this case, the print is also on Ilford material, their pearl-finish resin-coated multigrade paper.

Other than figuring out which filter to attach to the 150mm, this was a fairly simple shot to make, and a straight print at a lower contrast (because Pan F+ and I’m still dialing in my development times with it).