extension tubes?

Mick616 · 22 Oct 2021

hello, I recently got myself a 100mm f 2.8 macro lens from wex, I am wondering, is it extension tubes I need to get greater magnification? I am really enjoying working with it, totally inspired after watching Simon Booth videos.
thanks.

Snapsh0t · 23 Oct 2021

It depends on how much extra magnification you want. Assuming your 100mm lens focusses down to 1:1 then 50mm of tubes will give you 1.5:1. More than 50mm and you could run into mechanical and electrical problems. After that you'll need to look at add-on close-up lenses but you'll need quite a high dioptre to get useful magnification with a 100mm lens. The Raynox DCR-250 is very popular but not easy to use. It's one of those areas where you need to experiment to see what suits you best.

Mick616 · 23 Oct 2021

Thanks, I was looking at the kenzo set of tubes on Amazon for 130 quid.

chrism8 · 23 Oct 2021

I use ext tubes a fair bit, they are a manual set so exposure is guess work initially but works well and gives decent results, imho the electrical connections are not worth having because macro is generally easier with manual focus anyway.

john.margetts · 23 Oct 2021

chrism8 said:
I use ext tubes a fair bit, they are a manual set so exposure is guess work initially but works well and gives decent results, imho the electrical connections are not worth having because macro is generally easier with manual focus anyway.

If you use the extension tubes with an adapter for a "proper" lens with an aperture ring, then auto-exposure should work just fine with the advantage that you can control depth of field.

Mick616 · 23 Oct 2021

Not sure what you mean John?

Mick616 · 23 Oct 2021

What brand or make Chris?

john.margetts · 23 Oct 2021

Mick616 said:
Not sure what you mean John?

If you use a digital lens with plain extension tubes it is not possible to adjust the aperture and every shot will be at maximum aperture and shallow depth of field. Of course, if you buy expensive tubes with electrical contacts, you can still adjust the aperture but I was responding to chrism8 who mentioned using manual tubes.

Garry Edwards · 23 Oct 2021

Extension tubes are extremely useful, but many modern lenses don't allow the aperture to be set on the actual lens. Because of that, you need auto extension tubes, these include a mechanism that transmits the aperture-closing instruction from the camera, through the tubes, to the lens.

Technically, they don't magnify. What they do is to act as a spacer between the lens and the body, which allows the lens to be much closer to the subject.

Snapsh0t · 24 Oct 2021

Mick616 said:
Thanks, I was looking at the kenzo set of tubes on Amazon for 130 quid.

That's a good choice. There are much cheaper sets available from JJC, Meike, etc. but Kenko is the nearest to a gold standard. The one irritation with them is that they don't come with end caps. Well, my M43 set didn't and I can't remember if the Nikon ones did or not.

LCPete · 24 Oct 2021

I’ve used Jessops auto extension tubes and they work well but have to remember that using tubes reduces light so have to increase the ISO or use flash
They worked well but I now use a quality screw on close up lens the advantage for me is that I can get higher magnification without having to use flash as they don’t reduce light transmission
I use a Marumi achromatic one and Ranox are also good
Also it’s simple to just screw onto the front of the lens

nandbytes · 24 Oct 2021

you can get extension tube for £20-30, I wouldn't advice buying expensive ones especially not £100+. They don't work any better than cheaper ones in my experience.

Regardless as a rule of thumb if you want greater than life-size i.e. 1x or 1:1, extension tubes work better for wider focal lengths (<50mm) and macro close up lenses like raynox DCR-250 suggest above work better for longer focal lengths (>100mm).

this website is a really useful source for all things macro and they also have calculators for various scenarios and setups

Macro photograpy calculators, including extension tube, stacked lens and focus stack step calculators

Tools and calculators for macro photography, including extension tube calculator, focus stack step calculator and reverse macro working distance calculator

extreme-macro.co.uk

chrism8 · 24 Oct 2021

Mick616 said:
What brand or make Chris?

Pentax medium format Mick

Mick616 · 24 Oct 2021

nandbytes said:
you can get extension tube for £20-30, I wouldn't advice buying expensive ones especially not £100+. They don't work any better than cheaper ones in my experience.

Regardless as a rule of thumb if you want greater than life-size i.e. 1x or 1:1, extension tubes work better for wider focal lengths (<50mm) and macro close up lenses like raynox DCR-250 suggest above work better for longer focal lengths (>100mm).

this website is a really useful source for all things macro and they also have calculators for various scenarios and setups

Macro photograpy calculators, including extension tube, stacked lens and focus stack step calculators

Tools and calculators for macro photography, including extension tube calculator, focus stack step calculator and reverse macro working distance calculator

extreme-macro.co.uk

Thanks, I will have a look at this.

Garry Edwards · 24 Oct 2021

Mick616 said:
Thanks, I will have a look at this.

See my earlier post. Cheap, non-auto ones will be fine ONLY if you can set the lens aperture on your lens, not on your camera.

Winslowe · 24 Oct 2021

john.margetts said:
If you use a digital lens with plain extension tubes it is not possible to adjust the aperture and every shot will be at maximum aperture and shallow depth of field.

With Nikon G lenses, the aperture stays closed down to the minimum when on manual tubes.

Garry Edwards · 24 Oct 2021

Garry Edwards said:
See my earlier post. Cheap, non-auto ones will be fine ONLY if you can set the lens aperture on your lens, not on your camera.

To add, illustrated with a crappy phone pic complete with camera shake.
This pic shows the camera end of a Nikon tube (well, Nikon-fit, same thing, bought at a sensible price when I was in China)

Different makes will probably vary, but the arrow is pointing to a ,ever that is moved by the camera on auto extension tubes. This lever operates the aperture so, if you buy manual tunes then they won't have this lever and the lens will be at either max or min aperture unless the aperture can be set on the lens, which most can't.

Petrochemist · 25 Oct 2021

Snapsh0t said:
It depends on how much extra magnification you want. Assuming your 100mm lens focusses down to 1:1 then 50mm of tubes will give you 1.5:1. More than 50mm and you could run into mechanical and electrical problems. After that you'll need to look at add-on close-up lenses but you'll need quite a high dioptre to get useful magnification with a 100mm lens. The Raynox DCR-250 is very popular but not easy to use. It's one of those areas where you need to experiment to see what suits you best.

I'd suggest the DCR150 rather than the 250, it's less powerful so is easier to use

The 150 is +4.8 diopter, while the 250 is +8.

Have a look at http://www.extreme-macro.co.uk/ (my favourite resource for macro) using the calculator on the close-up lenses section I see adding a +1 diopter auxillary to your 100mm macro takes the maximum magnification from 1x to 1.2x (a +2 reaches 1.4x, a +4.8 reaches 1.96x & a +8 reaches 2.6x)

You can also use a reverse photography lens as a 'close-up filter' or combine multiple techniques...