Olympus Kit 40-150mm stacked with Canon 500D closeup lens

While mowing the lawn the other day I came across a near perfect dandelion-gone-to-seed.  It was all alone in the grass (I've done a pretty good job this spring killing off the weeds) and the afternoon light was good.  I went into the house and grabbed my camera.  But I did something a bit differently for the lens set up.

I took a kit 40-150R Olympus lens.  I bought this a year ago for $100 and I think it retails for $150-$200.  It has a plastic mount and is very light, weighing less than 7 ounces.  But the optics, at least on this sample, are excellent.  The plastic mount doesn't bother me. No matter how long the lens lasts, it will be well worth the price I paid. Indeed, the charts provided by slrgear.com show it to be sharp all the way up to F11.

Anyway, hoping not to compromise its sharpness too much, I attached a 500D Canon closeup lens into the filter threads. Mine has a 58mm diameter which fits perfectly on the 40-150.  I think I paid about $90 for it, so it isn't cheap, for a small chunk of glass.  But it modifies a zoom lens into a macro lens.

Metadata:  74mm, 1/320 sec, F5, ISO200.  
I had the minimum shutter speed set to 1/320 and F5 is "wide open" at the 74mm zoom mark. 
A touch of fill flash.  No cropping.

Center crop at 100%

Focusing is a bit tricky with the 500D attached.  It is designed to focus your zoom lens at 500mm (about 20").  That's it: 20" (plus or minus a couple of inches).Once you have achieved focus, you then zoom-in or zoom-out to compose your picture.  Zoomed-in I can focus on an object about 1 3/4" in width.  If that is too magnified, I just zoom out until I get the composition I am looking for.  If my subject is more than 4" in width, I don't need the closeup lens; there is enough magnification in the lens itself to accomplish this without an accessory.

[I also own a 58mm diameter 250D.  This is designed to focus your zoom lens at 250mm (about 10").  Fully zoomed-in at the 150mm end of the 40-150, I can focus on an object about 1" in width.]

Here're a few more examples using the 500D on top of the 40-150 zoom:

Metadata:  Zoom to 100mm, 1/250 sec, F5, ISO200.  
F5 is "wide open" at the 100mm zoom mark. 
A touch of fill flash.

Metadata:  Zoom to 82mm, 1/500 sec, F4.8, ISO200.   
A touch of fill flash.

Metadata:  Zoom to 150mm, 1/800 sec, F5.6, ISO200. 

Metadata:  Zoom to 78mm, 1/250 sec, F4.7, ISO200.  
A touch of fill flash.