Xiaomi MIJIA 4K + PIXAERO LENS for Extreme Macro Photography

whitefatalis

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My hobby is taking pictures of tiny animals, and I bought Mijia 4K to record videos/photos of tiny insects.
What I didn't know is that action cameras don't have focus control...(was thinking of phone cameras) and I got very disappointed.
It was too late for a refund and buying another camera looked silly so I searched for a 3rd party lens/filter for manual focus.
I even tried using a convex lens as an improvised macro filter and it kinda worked but it had obvious limitations.


Then I found this manual focus lens by PIXAERO; a custom lens from Russia.
I never really bought anything from Russia before which got me worried first, but their sales team guided me through purchasing and everything went well.

Now I can even focus on objects right next to the lens, which is very exciting!
I'm really satisfied with this product. Hope this would help other people with similar concerns :)
 
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I like the design, allowing lens replacement without opening up the camera. Obviously a specialist item which the price reflects.

@whitefatalis do you find the screen adequate for adjusting focus?
 
I like the design, allowing lens replacement without opening up the camera. Obviously a specialist item which the price reflects.

@whitefatalis do you find the screen adequate for adjusting focus?
On the Gitup F1 I found that just turning the lens to the marked distances worked fine for longer distances since these lenses have a huge depth of field. Once you get down to 1cm it becomes difficult to get focus right even with a tablet screen because then there is not enough depth of field to cover the whole body of an insect, then you really need a lens with an aperture that you can close up to increase depth of field, and then you also need the bright lighting equipment to go with it.
 
On the Gitup F1 I found that just turning the lens to the marked distances worked fine for longer distances since these lenses have a huge depth of field. Once you get down to 1cm it becomes difficult to get focus right even with a tablet screen because then there is not enough depth of field to cover the whole body of an insect, then you really need a lens with an aperture that you can close up to increase depth of field, and then you also need the bright lighting equipment to go with it.
The 160deg lens on the F1 will naturally have quite a large depth of field. This f3.77mm 80deg HFOV lens will have a smaller depth of field.
 
@whitefatalis do you find the screen adequate for adjusting focus?

It's a 2.4" touchscreen... ;_;
I take tons of pictures and compare them on PC.
Really wish I could magnify the image in album mode though... that would make my life a whole lot easier!
 
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On the Gitup F1 I found that just turning the lens to the marked distances worked fine for longer distances since these lenses have a huge depth of field. Once you get down to 1cm it becomes difficult to get focus right even with a tablet screen because then there is not enough depth of field to cover the whole body of an insect, then you really need a lens with an aperture that you can close up to increase depth of field, and then you also need the bright lighting equipment to go with it.

I've been using this for quite a while now, and it requires a lot of effort to produce a clear image at close distance.
I'm usually satisfied with the end result(requires tons of trials), but really wish they add a zoom-in function in the album mode.

I posted a suggestive thread at Mi community and hopefully they'll add this in the future firmware.

One upside is that this camera's originally intended for 4K video recording, and it's good at what it does.
It's a really cool thing to be able to record 1080p 60FPS videos at a super macro distance.
 
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