With my fixed lens cameras there are only two ways of capturing close-ups: use the camera's close-up mode if it has one, or use close-up lenses. With my interchangeable lens cameras there is no close-up mode so the two options for the sort of magnifications I use are close-up lenses on (typically zoom) camera lenses or macro lenses, extension tubes, teleconverters, bellows or reversed lenses, any of which can be combined with close-up lenses. I have tried all these except bellows.
My fixed lens cameras' close-up modes only work at the wide angle end of the zoom range. They let you focus very close indeed to the subject, perhaps only 1 cm away, or even in one case touching the subject. Such very short working distances are problematic for what I want to do, especially for invertebrates. I also want to use more magnification than these close-up modes can provide. Close-up lenses are therefore the only practical option for my purposes on my fixed lens cameras.
I have used close-up lenses quite a lot with interchangeable lens cameras. I put the close-up lenses on telezoom cameras lenses, using low power close-up lenses for botanical subjects (or for larger subjects no close-up lens), and using the more powerful close-up lenses for invertebrates.
I now have a range of close-up lenses of varying power which provide as much magnification as I want to use, and a bit more.
On my bridge cameras and Panasonic G series cameras I find autofocus works well with close-up lenses down to scene widths of 10mm and smaller, with no hunting. I found autofocus usable with close-up lenses on a 55-250 lens on the APS-C Canon 70D, but not as fast or reliable as with the other cameras. Also, I use single area auto focusing and, unlike with the other cameras, the smallest focus box on the 70D is too large to allow precise focus placement.
Autofocusing is not quite as fast or reliable with the Olympus 60mm macro, but entirely usable. Autofocusing on the full frame macro lenses I have tried on full frame and APS-C (Canon 100L macro and Sigma 105 macro) was less satisfactory than with the Olympus 60mm macro, with more and sometimes lengthy focus hunting, and sometimes not finding focus at all. The more powerful macro lenses I have tried (Canon MPE-65 1X to 5X and Meike 85mm up to 1.5X) do not have autofocus.
I have tried various combinations of macro lenses, extension tubes, teleconverters and reversed lenses on interchangeable lens cameras. The only one of these that has worked well has been the Olympus 60mm macro on my G series Panasonics, used for botanical subjects. It provides the range of magnifications I need with no need to make any adjustments such as adding and removing extension tubes or close-up lenses to get the magnification I need for particular subjects. The 60mm macro is very small and very light, which makes it excellent for using hand-held, including for long sessions and for using one-handed if necessary to get at awkwardly placed subjects. It is sharp, like most macro lenses. Autofocus works well enough for my purposes.
In contrast the macro lenses I have tried with my larger sensor cameras, the APS-C Canon 70D and the full frame Sony A7ii, are big and too heavy (for me) to be comfortable for extended use; my right wrist starts to ache well within the first hour.
For use in the field close-up lenses have the advantage of not needing to open up the camera and risk dust on the sensor in order to get to a different range of magnifications. I consider this to be a big advantage as I have had a lot of problems with dust on sensors. So much so in fact that as soon as I got the Panasonic G9 I removed the dust from the sensor (which was there straight out of the sealed box), put the Olymput 60mm macro on it and have left it there, effectively turning the G9 into a single lens camera.
After much experimentation I am currently fairly settled in my use of kit for my main subjects, invertebrates and botanical subjects, using close-up lenses almost all the time for invertebrates and using a macro lens almost all the time for botanical subjects.
There are a few more details about this in this earlier post.
There is a great deal more about how I worked my way through these options over the course of several years in this series of posts at Talkphotography.co.uk.
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