Macro

Just now tried my R5 on the tabletop aimed at a mm rule and measured the distance between the plastic front of the lens assembly and the rule I was shooting......

What a pain to do, no wonder I didn't do this before. Used Step Zoom to get repeatable results and also Zoom Macro Scene mode. Used Manual focus set to closest distance in all cases. AF works the same and settles at the same minimum distance. The first line is the Zoom Macro setting of 9.6mm focal length, the rest are at the step zoom spots.

focal length....35mm equiv.......front to subject.......frame side to side
9.6mm...........58mm..................4mm....................21mm (Zoom Macro)
4.6mm...........28mm..................8mm....................28.5mm
5.8mm...........35mm..................2mm....................21mm
8.3mm...........50mm..................2mm....................20mm
14mm............85mm..................2mm....................19mm
17.3mm........105mm.................10mm...................22mm
22.3mm........135mm.................33mm...................27.5mm
33mm...........200mm.................95mm...................37mm
And at max tele at different distances to subject.....
33mm..........200mm.................140mm...................46mm
33mm..........200mm.................250mm...................67mm

It's a hellish pain to get light in on the rule at those silly 2mm distances, really impossible to work with, so the 105mm to 200mm setting works better, plus of course below about 105mm the barrel distortion is quite alarming.

Not sure where they get the "1cm" and "14cm" shooting distances from. Maybe when the lens was at 200mm at closest focus it was 140mm approx from the subject to the camera body. Weird marketing talk at work here, it appears that they have never actually used the cameras at macro and measured that lens front (the plastic bit) to subject distance at all.

Now if someone with patience would do the same with the R6.... or at very least set the R6 to manual focus at minimum distance and max tele and see what that plastic front to subject distance really is.

Dinner time now with a nice bottle of red wine to forget about this painful little test.

Regards............... Guy