Howdy. With spring mostly here, photography thoughts turn to buds, bugs and flowers, all excellent candidates for closeup photography. This often engenders opinion searches on close up photography, sometimes called macro photography, sometimes microphotography and sometimes other stuff.

Since I cannot fix nomenclature and very few actually care about getting the terms correct, we are going to forego that and look at alternatives to commercial macro / micro lenses. Nothing wrong with them to be sure,. They are often the sharpest lenses built and unlike most other lenses have a perfectly flat focus field. I’ve always owned macro lenses but I’m a photo geek.

Extension Tubes

What are extension tubes? An extension tube at its most simplistic is a hollow tube that moves a lens further away from the sensor plane. This permits the camera / lens combination to focus closer at the expense of no longer being able to focus at a distance. They are a simple accessory with modern units providing coupling for aperture and autofocus control. Unfortunately not all are created equal and some could bring damage to your kit.

Extension tubes need to be precision devices, the front mount has to be perfectly parallel to the rear mount. I have found MANY offshore tube sets that cannot even achieve this goal. Junk, all of them.

Extension tubes need to mount solidly and lock to the body of the camera mount. I have found some, sold as “great” in National camera stores, that cannot do this basic function. If it says Aputure on the box, they don’t lock on and you should avoid them like you would a rabid dog.

Extension tubes need to lock the lens in place when it is mounted. See the previous paragraph regarding the Aputure line of tubes. Crap. Junk, Avoid. At one time in a store in one of the nationals, I went through six sets of tubes from Aputure and they were all lousy. I sent them back as defective and put a small mark on the boxes. They showed up back in the same store in two weeks. Selling stuff at high margin was apparently more important than customer joy.

Most camera makers build their own extension tubes. They are excellent and MASSIVELY overpriced. You are buying a hollow tube with some very basic electronics. If you are paying over $200 for a manufacturer’s single extension tube, see a physician to have the fish hook removed from your mouth.

A Proven Solution

I have been using a set of three extension tubes by Kenko for over 15 years. They are excellent and the set of three cost less than a single tube from the camera maker. Kenko is part of the Tokina organization, a very credible maker, but margins are lower on Kenko than on junk brands like Aputure so many stores choose not to carry them. That’s a choice of course. B&H does carry Kenko and has tube sets for Nikon, Canon, Sony, and Micro 4/3s available. If you choose, you can support me by going to B&H through the link on my site.

The nice thing about a set of three tubes is that it provides you a lot of flexibility in terms of how close you need / want to get and as shown here, you can stack them for more extension. Because they couple your lens to your camera, you retain through the lens metering, through the lens flash metering and autofocus. AF will be a bit slower because as you already know, the closer you are, the less depth of field you are going to have.

I’m going to say that using tubes means using some kind of support. The super shallow depth of field is going to put handholding off the list in most all cases. So bring your tripod or Platypod when doing this kind of work.

A Use for that Nifty Fifty

A few years ago, makers found that 50mm primes just weren’t selling so they rebranded them portrait lenses. This load of general BS, resulted in a huge boost in sales and a lot of 50mm lenses lying ignored in the bottom of the camera bag. The 50mm is in general to wide an angle of view for anything but a full length portrait on full frame and too short for headshots on crop sensors. What this lens does bring is stellar optics and very fast lens speed for very little money. However, many photographers would rather twist to zoom than zoom with their feet and so the 50mm gathers dust.

A 50mm regardless of sensor size (25mm on M43) coupled with a set of tubes gets you into the macro world without the macro expense. You have a very versatile lens and can turn it into a fast and powerful macro lens by adding a set of tubes. Perhaps adding a set of tubes to your dusty 50 could save you the expense of a dedicated macro lens!

Do you have an idea for an article, tutorial, video or podcast? Do you have an imaging question unrelated to this article? Send me an email directly at ross@thephotovideoguy.ca or post in the comments.  When you email your questions on any imaging topic, I will try to respond within a day.

If you shop with B&H Photo Video, please consider doing so through the link on thephotovideoguy.ca as this helps support my efforts and has no negative impact whatsoever on your shopping experience. 

If you find the podcast, videos or articles of value, consider clicking the Donation tab in the sidebar of the website and buy me a coffee. Your donation goes to help me keep things going. 

I'm Ross Chevalier, thanks for reading, watching and listening and until next time, peace.