Kuru Toga mechanical pencil and Green.L close-up filter

I've been meaning to write about this for ages, but I kept putting off taking the pictures.

I like taking macro pictures, so I miss my Sony T2, which took great macros. SLRs, which have lenses for everything, also have macro lenses, which means normal lenses leave taking macro pictures to those lenses (i.e. normal lenses can't take macro pictures). The options for taking macro on SLRs are:

1. Buy a macro lens
2. Get a lens extension tube
3. Get a macro filter

1 is very expensive. 2 sounds like a great way to get dust in your camera body. 3 is surprisingly hard to find in camera stores, maybe because their quality is poor. Or because stores can't earn much money from them. Enter eBay.

I bought this close-up filter for less than $10, including delivery. I shall test it by taking pictures of the Kuru Toga mechanical pencil.

The Kuru Toga, by Uni, attempts to fix a problem with mechanical pencils. With conventional mechanical pencils, the pencil lead starts out as a cylinder with a perpendicular face. Since only 1 "corner" of the cylinder contacts the paper, the lead makes nice sharp lines. After some use, the cylinder wears down, more and more lead contacts the paper and the lines become dull. From the side, the lead looks like a sawtooth waveform. The Kuru Toga fixes this by continually rotating the lead, so it wears all around the cylinder, looking like a triangular waveform. Personally, I don't encounter this problem as I naturally rotate the pencil for the same reason, but I bought this because it was special.

UV filter

Macro filter

I took these pictures by setting the zoom to 55 mm and positioning the camera as close as it could focus. It appears to be able to take closer pictures at 55 mm than 18 mm. This might be due to the zoom, not the distance of the camera. The picture taken with the macro filter seems closer than without. It doesn't seem to let the camera focus closer, maybe it just magnifies the image. With cheap filters, image quality is usually poor, but this seems ok. The sides are out of focus, but the image with the UV filter has the same problem. The centre is ok.
The Kuru Toga has a ratcheting mechanism that rotates the lead every time you press it to paper. You can see the orange and white teeth in the images above. In my experience, you have to press harder to get it to rotate. I usually don't press as hard as normal people, so maybe it'll rotate with normal writing pressure.

Conclusions

• Macro filter works, but effect is not very great
• Kuru Toga works, but you may have to press harder
• Kuru Toga is cool