I am often able to obtain reasonably frame filling images of the "flightier" insects such as butterflies and dragonflies using a Sigma 105mm macro on my Olympus E1. Does the 45mm Leica Elmarit allow close approach to enable similar sized images to be obtained. My experience this morning suggests yes, but not as often as a longer FL lens would. This first image shows the typical image size obtained before the insect took flight. The conditions for this shot were reasonably sunny and sheltered from the wind. There has been no cropping of the image. {} Panasonic G1, 45mm Leica Elmarit, iso 400, 1/320 sec, f13 The second shot shows that a closer approach was possible, but I was lucky and certainly inside the insects normal "danger take flight" range. Similar conditions to shot 1 and again not cropped. {} Panasonic G1, 45mm Leica Elmarit, iso 400, 1/500 sec, f8 The third shot was taken in more overcast conditions with the insect remaining perched and showing no signs of flight, but that was mostly down to the atmospheric conditions, again not cropped {} Panasonic G1, 45mm Leica Elmarit, iso 400, 1/60 sec, f11 The camera white balance was set to shady (showed a temp of 7410 in RAW processor). There was no post processing of any images apart from resampling to 72 ppi and unsharp masking applied using amount 40%, radius 1.0, threshold 0 in Photoshop 7, applied twice. I hope this might be of interest to budding field macro photographers. I have a micro Nikkor 105mm secondhand lens on order, I won't be able to approach dragonflies so easily! Barrie
Having had (and sold) the Oly 35 and 50 and the Sigma 105 the Sigma was clearly the easiest for not spooking insects. Haven't tried them since converting to the 45mm but your shots look pretty good.
Being a 4/3 lens and assuming you have a 4/3 to m4/3 adapter you should have full control over aperture, focussing etc.
