Playing with extension tubes

Santa brought me a set of extension tubes for Christmas and it's taken a while to start playing with them and learn how to use them.

John and I set the camera on a tripod and lined up the subject (a clump of tiny mushrooms). We also used the cable shutter release to minimise movement while taking the photos.

It was quite easy. You can zoom in with the LCD screen to focus finely on your subject. You can even lock on the subject in focus and carefully move the camera so it is in a new position on the screen without losing focus.

There were four tubes in the set. By using different sized tubes or a combination of tubes, you can achieve different magnification. By changing the focal length (f) on the camera  you can focus on one mushroom only or the entire group.

For our purposes, any flower from the garden would make a good subject....

We collected a few and played a bit more.....

A hibiscus stamen using a very narrow depth of field with just a few clumps of pollen in focus.

Murraya made a great subject

Probably a bit too close -

 We took a series of shots at various focal lengths and various exposures to see the difference it made.

a pawpaw flower



Of course extension tubes are not as effective for macros as a proper macro lens, but then they are very much less expensive. I'm happy to experiment with them and keep learning. For a very amateur photographer like me they are perfect. Thanks again Santa.