Macro plants? Nope

[Steve Foss]

I finally got a chance to play with my new set of Kenko extension tubes.

For those of you who aren't familiar with them, tubes are simply hollow rings that mate between the camera and lens and pass electronic information between them. They act as magnifiers because, by pulling the lens farther from the plane of the camera, they allow you to focus much closer than the typical minimum focusing distance of the lens.

So they make the lens feel like a macro lens. Had I used all three tubes together (12mm, 20mm and 36mm) in these images, the face of the lens would have been about a quarter inch away from the subject (normal minimum focus distance with this lens is about 9 inches). Using all the tubes would have produced so much apparent magnification that these would not be recognizable.

Instead, I just used the 20mm tube. These images are not fine art or anything, just examples of what can be done with certain equipment.

Canon 30D, Canon 17-40L, Kenko 20mm extension tube, Manfrotto 724B tripod, custom function-noise reduction at long exposure, remote shutter release

24mm, iso100, .6 sec at f22, full frame

Daffodil from the garden

40mm, iso400, 1 sec, slight crop

Fall lake [me] willow flowering

Here's what the full set of tubes looks like fastened together. You can use one at at time or any combination of them to achieve the close focus you're after. They can turn a standard 50mm lens into a macro easy as pie. You do, however, have to work REALLY close to the subject, so while they work fine for flowers and such, bees and butterflies and other living creatures tend not to be good subjects.

[jonny_redhorse]

great macros Steve!...I really "get into" those macros!...a world in itself!...and you certainly are right in that one has to get super close to those bees and butterflys(and dragonflies)...my lens on my fuji literally brushes against the little guys wings at times ...never been stung yet though ....enjoy those new lenses!

[Swimmer]

After seeing some of Steve's work with the Kenkos last Fall, I had to get a set of these. They are not expensive and add a bit of versatility to your lens collection. One thing I've found though is you need a fairly calm day...