Thursday, April 10, 2014

Budget Macro Photography - Extension tubes/rings

So the lovely wedding photographer I've been working with Nick Murray first introduced me to extension tubes as a cheap alternative to macro photography. At weddings there is usually only one thing you need to macro - the ring photo and for one photo sometimes it's a bit crazy to lug around a heavy macro lens.  This is where the extension tubes come in handy.  Essentially they are a tube that extends your own lens (fitted to the camera body before you put your lens on) allowing you to focus more closely on a subject.



Now with most camera equipment you can get the high end goods right down to the ridiculously cheap items off eBay. I personally went ridiculous cheap (under ten dollars) because I wanted to test the tubes out but after using them for a few weeks I'm definitely keen to upgrade. The set I bought doesn't have any electric contacts and therefore can't speak with the lens or camera, so you have to manually focus (which is okay because I use manual most of the time anyway) but the other bad news is that you can only shoot wide open - so you have to really nail focus. My set came with three rings but I've only been using the one - more that that and I've found the magnification just too much. My set also had this crazy silver lever you have to press down when removing the tube - I may have spent ten minutes thinking I had officially stuck an extension tube onto my camera for life!


For a few dollars that's not a bad shot to get :) I have been playing around with Nick's high end macro lens as well and it's beautiful and definitely in a different league to the tubes but if you want a cheaper solution and one that is easy to carry around I definitely recommend getting yourself some of these :)

12 comments:

  1. We still have not ventured into the macro world :) so I find very useful your recommendation (well, or Nick's :P) to have an alternative for that few shots. A friend has a good macro lens and the results are amazing, but I guess you have to be really invested on using it for the purchase to pay off (good lens are not usually affordable :P well, maybe the 50mm is the exception ;P)

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    1. Yeah exactly, lenses are super crazy expensive! Once we're all mega rich we'll upgrade :P but for now I think this is a good alternative :)

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  2. how neat! i wonder if this is something that my friend also gave me a while back. is it the same concept with fish lens? he gave me something to stick on to mimic the round effect but unfortunately i didn't play around with it too much. these are gorgeous shots (as always!).

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    1. I wonder was the ring to put on a normal lens to make it look like fish eyes with the super wide and distortion effect? You can get loads of different adapters - these tubes though are just to extend the lens length so you can focus really close to an object. Pretty simple but effective :)

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  3. it seems like a very interesting thing :)

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    1. I'd definitely recommend! I remember starting on point and shoot cameras and doing macro all the time and then in comes our more "fancy" cameras and there goes my easy macro!

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  4. This is awesome! I have been looking at fish eye lenses all night and can't decide on one, I might order one of these too though :) I just want to mix things up a bit but not have to buy a new lens haha.

    Amazing results! x

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    1. Lenses can definitely be a big hole in the pocket - some cheap ideas are always helpful :)

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  5. Wow this has just made me want to get a macro lens even more! Stunning photos :)
    http://saltskinned.blogspot.com.au

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    1. I'd still love to get a real macro lens too but for now this will do :) :)

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  6. These look amazing to me! Imagine what you can do with a better one.

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    1. Thanks Trishie you are always too kind :)

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