About macro extension tubes – P365 Nov03

This humble aluminium tube has opened up a whole new photographic world for me. The world of the small.

A series of tubes

All lenses have a limit to how close they can focus. A typical lens, for example, may not be able to focus on anything closer than 30cm. This is because as objects move closer to the lens, the focal point moves further back, eventually beyond the plane of the film or sensor. An obvious way around this problem is to move the lens further away from the camera. That’s what macro extension tubes do.

The macro extension tubes that I use are very cheap and simple. As you can see from the second photo above, it comes in five sections. At each end is a bayonet ring for mounting the tube to the lens and camera body (in this case Canon EOS). In between those any combination of three threaded tubes of varying length can be used to change the extension by varying degrees. That’s all there is to these tubes, nothing more.

Pros and cons

As with all compromises, there are trade-offs to the solution. This is especially true of a cheap, bare-bones solution like mine. Here’s the costs/benefits of tubes like mine:

Alternatives

There are, of course, ways around many of these problems. The most obvious one (and one to which I one day plan to graduate) is using official brand name extension tubes. They most likely have the needed connections to allow full control of the lens from the camera, and each tube is bayonetted, making swapping and stacking them far simpler. Of course this makes them more complicated and more expensive solutions. The ability to keep auto focus and apeture control is a huge advantage likely worth the cost, however. Here’s an example of one Canon extension tube. Note the cost for a single extension, compared to that of my five piece no-name tube.

If you have a bigger budget, or enjoy macro photography enough to justify the cost, you can buy specialised macro lenses. These are great for macro photography. They eliminate many of the problems, especially chromatic aberation, and can get you extremely close to the subject. Also, extension tubes can even be fitted to these, resulting in the possibility of some insanely huge macro magnification. They are specialised optics, however, and can be quite expensive, especially when compared to extension tubes.

Lighting for macro

This can be an extremely tricky and frustrating issue. In fact it’s worthy of a detailed post in itself, so I’ll only mention it briefly here. There are many possible solutions, including:

• Shooting in a light tent.
• Using reflectors.
• A professional ring flash.
• A macro flash bracket.
• Or even a super cheap and fast hack.

Final thoughts and links

Ever since I got these tubes, I’ve loved shooting macro photos. It’s a lot of fun and gives so many new opportunities. It’s a challenge to be sure, but that’s part of the fun. I plan to upgrade to “real” extension tubes in the future, but when the entry level gear is so cheap, there’s no reason at all not to try your own hand at macro photography.

Here’s some useful and inspirational links about macro photography:

• Macro group photo pool at Flickr.
• Equipment Options for Macro Photography at Epic Edits weblog.
• No Cropping Zone a blog about macro photography.
• How To: DIY $10 Macro Photo Studio at Strobist.
• Macro photogarphy at Wikipedia.

View some of my macro photos at Flickr