Macro photography! (for realz, kinda)

I ordered a set of macro extension tubes for my camera. They are just an adapter that puts extra space between the lens and the camera body, which brings the focal point closer to the end of the lens. There are three different tubes, marked 28mm, 14mm and 7mm. As well you can go without a tube, which I called 0mm (but it really still a fair distance). If you desire, you can add them together to go further.

There is no electrical connection on these tubes, which means that auto-focus and aperture settings are completely unavailable. You focus by moving the focus ring on the lens, or by…moving the camera closer and further away from the subject :). The aperture is wide-open and you can’t change that, which has some ramifications.

This lets you take photos of things much closer up!

A few things I learned:

• You have to use each marked tube section individually. Starting with 28+14+7mm total is veeeery blurry.
• Because the aperture is wide open, the only way to change it is to change lenses. My 28mm Prime is f/2.5 wide open, and my 28mm-82mm is f/3.5-f/5.6.
• The f/2.5 is a lot brighter, so I was able to take photos a little faster and reduce motion blur. But you also get a much shallower depth of field, so only small sections of the photo can be in focus at once.
• The 28mm-82mm is best used at full zoom so that the lens can be further away from the target, so you can get more light on the target. Because it’s f/5.6 at full zoom, you need a lot of light!

What this means is that where in most situations a bright lens is better, here it might be better to get a longer zoom so that you can get further away so as to not bump into the target, with a higher minimum aperture so that you can get more target into the depth of field.

Here’s some photos to hopefully illustrate. I took a head shot and then a series of gun shots – I could get the lens closer to the gun so it was generally a better picture.

[You can click on the photos to open up larger versions. Be warned – they are LARGE versions – 4000×3000]

28mm lens/7mm macro. A couple really close images. Still to short a focus depth.

28mm lens/0mm macro. I took a series of photos of the tank of the flamer to illustrate how shallow the depth of field is on the 28mm f/2.5. Watch as the sharp part of the image moves towards the back of the tank.

82mm lens/28mm macro. This distance was largely unusable – I couldn’t get the camera close enough to the face to be able to take a non-blurry photo.

82mm lens/14mm macro. Still closer.

82mm lens/7mm macro. Closer…

82mm lens/0mm macro. Closer than the camera usually is able to get, but still pretty far away. This isn’t bad.

I like learning new things. 😀