Thanks Paul! I'm having fun seeing how close and detailed I can get on small things like flowers and bugs. I've been trying to fill the frame with the subject and the extension tubes made this possible.
The extension tubes aren't a teleconverter, they are just empty tubes that have the electronics in them so that the auto focus and TTL will still work with the lens and camera. All the tubes do is move your lens farther away from the camera sensor which allows the lens to focus at a closer distance. The 28-300mm normally focuses at just over a foot and with the extension tubes it will focus at less than 2 inches.
Aaron and I played with them some this weekend measuring different lenses to see how it change the focusing distance and on lenses that normally focus fairly close like the 28-300mm it makes a dramatic difference. On the 80- 200mm which has about almost a 5 foot focusing distance it dropped that distance by a little over a foot and a half.
The extension tubes are the cheap mans way to a good macro lens. I think I actually like them better than my macro lens because I can shoot 300mm at 2 inches away from a subject which really brings in the small things. You can get the third party tubes for about $50-$60 depending on the sizes you get. Most of them come in sets of three. Mine has 12, 20 and 36mm tubes that you can uses individually or stacked in any combination. Stacking all three makes the auto focus hunt a lot and I have been manually focusing just to get the crisp shots I want.
They're pretty fun to play with if you can find a subject that will stay still long enough.
oh YES! Great!
ReplyDeleteYou are sure getting some nice results with your 28-300 and extension tube combination!
ReplyDeleteI'm assuming by extension tube you are talking about a teleconverter between your camera body and the lens or is this something else?
Thanks Paul! I'm having fun seeing how close and detailed I can get on small things like flowers and bugs. I've been trying to fill the frame with the subject and the extension tubes made this possible.
DeleteThe extension tubes aren't a teleconverter, they are just empty tubes that have the electronics in them so that the auto focus and TTL will still work with the lens and camera. All the tubes do is move your lens farther away from the camera sensor which allows the lens to focus at a closer distance. The 28-300mm normally focuses at just over a foot and with the extension tubes it will focus at less than 2 inches.
Aaron and I played with them some this weekend measuring different lenses to see how it change the focusing distance and on lenses that normally focus fairly close like the 28-300mm it makes a dramatic difference. On the 80- 200mm which has about almost a 5 foot focusing distance it dropped that distance by a little over a foot and a half.
The extension tubes are the cheap mans way to a good macro lens. I think I actually like them better than my macro lens because I can shoot 300mm at 2 inches away from a subject which really brings in the small things. You can get the third party tubes for about $50-$60 depending on the sizes you get. Most of them come in sets of three. Mine has 12, 20 and 36mm tubes that you can uses individually or stacked in any combination. Stacking all three makes the auto focus hunt a lot and I have been manually focusing just to get the crisp shots I want.
They're pretty fun to play with if you can find a subject that will stay still long enough.
Thanks for the explanation, I had no idea there was such a thing for our Nikon SLR's, sounds affordable too! Going to google this for sure.
Deletei like the skipper in the 3rd.
ReplyDeleteQuite a contraption your using for the macros. Seems to do the job well!
ReplyDeleteSkipper in the third pic catches my eye!