Macro photography on the cheap.

[ausf]

I'm been meaning to get a good macro lens for years, but every time I'd hate to drop serious coin on it.

 

I decided to give extension tubes a go. They're a cheap alternative so I kind of assumed would give cheap results. I'm pretty surprised how well they work.

 

Using an entry level Canon Rebel and a $40 Nikkor-P vintage lens I got for animation, I put the tubes to the test. I bought a set of Kenko, 3 tubes of 12, 20 and 36mm that were cheaper than one Canon branded tube. The idea behind them is they create more distance between the sensor and the back of the lens, allowing you to get closer to the subject. In theory, if you use 50mm or extension with a 50mm lens, it's basically like having the object touching the sensor. I also tried the 50mm lens that came with the Rebel. 

 

I grabbed a 1/35 Tamiya styrene head I started but never finished. It was laying in the bottom of the spares drawer, covered it dust and scratched up pretty good, please excuse that. 

 

It's lit with my bench work lamp (Ikea), simple LED bulb, no fancy light rig. 

 

First photo was the Nikkor 55 mm lens with 12mm of extension.

 

 

Next is the same lens with all the tubes attached. It destroys the depth of field, but the magnification is pretty damn good, especially for a 50 year old, cheap lens. 

 

 

And finally, the basic Canon 18-50mm lens with all the tubes in place.

 

 

 

So, no need to get crazy if you want to take closeups of your work. 

Edited January 23, 2021 by ausf
typo

[kurtvd19]

And with digital photography you see immediately if the exposure was good or not - no need to figure the exposure factor for the tube or tubes used.

[Jim Lad]

Tubes work very well for macro photography.  Their main disadvantage is that they have a very narrow fixed focus range which makes them a bit tricky to use on moving subjects such as insects.  The depth of field can be vastly improved by 'focus stacking' - taking a series of images at different focus depths and then combining the images in a photo processing programme.

 

John

[ausf]

37 minutes ago, kurtvd19 said:

And with digital photography you see immediately if the exposure was good or not - no need to figure the exposure factor for the tube or tubes used.

 

You got that right. Camera was hooked up to the Macbook and done live view so I could change shutter speed and ISO (can't adjust f stop with the manual lens) and adjust before taking anything. 

 

I try to explain to my kids that I had to wait a week for a roll of film to come back before you found out if you even captured anything. 

[ausf]

37 minutes ago, Jim Lad said:

Tubes work very well for macro photography.  Their main disadvantage is that they have a very narrow fixed focus range which makes them a bit tricky to use on moving subjects such as insects.  The depth of field can be vastly improved by 'focus stacking' - taking a series of images at different focus depths and then combining the images in a photo processing programme.

 

John

Great points John, thanks.

 

I will definitely look into focus stacking when I use these for actual projects. 

 

[mtaylor]

1 hour ago, ausf said:

Great points John, thanks.

 

I will definitely look into focus stacking when I use these for actual projects. 

 

 

Do a search here on MSW using "focus stacking" as the key word.   We've had quite a bit of discussion on this.  There's also been discussion in few build logs which is why I suggest a search here.

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

in comparison canon 65 figure at 1/192

[Charles Green]

An even less expensive way to achieve magnification is to use a lens reverse ring.  They have a male lens-mount on one side and male lens filter threads on the other.  Mount the ring on the camera and then screw the lens on to it - backwards.  If you want to see how this works, just hold a lens backwards over a camera's lens opening.  Be prepared to get very close to the subject while experiencing very shallow depth-of-field - both are facts of life in macro photography.    

 

The amount of magnification a reversed lens will produce can be estimated by comparing the apparent diameters of the lenses entrance and exit pupils.  For the 35mm format, a 50mm lens mounted backwards will get you around 0.5M - the image on the film will be 1/2 life size.  This reproduction ratio is fixed for any specific lens.  Shorter lenses will provide more magnification and longer ones, less.  Your extension tubes can be used in conjunction with a reversed lens to achieve quite a bit more magnification - so much so that hand-held exposures quickly become impractical.  Even at 0.5M, you must be very careful with your technique. 

 

The different diameters of the entrance and exit pupils is a function of lens design.  Conventional lenses are optically asymmetric.  Dedicated macro lenses are usually designed to be optically symmetrical, so reversing them will not get you any where.  However, once M becomes greater than 1, an M factor that exceeds the design parameters of most general use macro lenses,  resolution will be better if the lens is mounted in reverse.

 

Reverse lens mounting means manual operation of the camera.  This is good.  It doesn't mean things get harder.  It only means you must know what you are doing. 

 

      

[jhearl]

I would offer a somewhat contrarian view and say that macro gear may not be the best solution for close-up model photography. I own a Nikon D800 and three different macro lenses plus a bellows and tripod - altogether some quite expensive equipment. I use none of it for model photography. Instead, I use what would be considered a high-end point-and-shoot (Fuji X100F).  That camera has a fixed focal-length 23mm lens and a 16 megapixel sensor. The camera cost around $1K new but now sells for around $500 used. It has a lot of controls that someone used to a digital SLR would want, which is one of the reasons for it's high cost. But, I can use that camera hand-held, in relatively poor light (it has an f2 lens), and get very good results. It is able to close-focus to just under 4 inches (so-called macro mode) but because of its 23mm lens, it's also useful for taking a shot of a whole boat. I almost never use a tripod - just hand held. The advantage of the 16mpx sensor is that it's easy to crop in on something to get the impression that it was shot with a macro lens but generally has better depth of field. Newer cameras have even larger sensors, which means even tighter crops.

 

Here, for example is a quickie shot (uncropped) of a ruler about as close as I could focus:

 

Here's a crop from the same image (slightly out of focus but I wasn't being very careful with it). It was shot at f/8 at 1/110sec.

 

Here's an actual photo from one of my builds. You can see there's a much greater depth of field than would be typical with a macro lens:

 

And another:

 

There's nothing wrong with macro, but it does require a lot more work and a lot more care in using it than just picking up a little point-and-shoot and hand-holding it. Not to mention it can require much more expensive gear and, if you get into focus stacking, much more time.  So I'm just offering this as an alternative. If you already own a digital SLR, before you buy a macro lens, try a wide-angle lens if you have one.  I have a 16mm lens for one of mine and I can achieve similar results with it although it doesn't focus as closely as the P&S camera.

 

Cheers -

John

 

[thibaultron]

One thing I do with my P&S is that I have one of those round lamps with the magnifier lens in the center. I will sometimes shoot a small part through the lens. ie. camera - lamp lens - part. It takes a bit to get everything focused, but it's free! I do most of my modeling of small stuff looking through the lamp lens anyway.

[Charles Green]

jhearl:

 

Enlarging or cropping to achieve a larger image produces what is call "empty magnification".  The image is larger but it does not contain any more information than the smaller image.  The result is a larger image but a loss of resolution.  

 

A wide-angle lenses close-focusing ability must not be confused with an ability to magnify.  The field-of-view of a macro lens of the same focal length, set at the same focusing distance, will be much narrower than that of the wide-angle lens. 

 

Concerning wide-angle lenses:  the depth of field they achieve at close focusing distances is a function of their short focal lengths.  But take a lens of any other focal-length, set things up so it covers the same field-of-view as the wide-angle lens, set the f# the same, and the depth-of-field will be the same.   

[jhearl]

I did not intend to imply that cropping produced a larger, magnified image. Clearly it does not. But one needs to think about the ultimate use for the image. If you're intending to use the image in a book or perhaps a magazine article, then cropping may not be the best course of action. If you're planning to make a 16"x20" color print of a tiny feature on your model to hang on your wall, it certainly won't work. But in reality, most people use images of their models on websites such as MSW, or perhaps, to email to friends. In that case, resolution is a minimal factor.

 

For example, the image of the C-clamp is 800 pixels wide. If printed at 300dpi, it would only be 2.66 inches wide, which might be too small for a book. But posted on the web, it's an entirely acceptable size.  So, I'm only saying consider the intended use for the image in your choice of equipment. Macro photography is a cumbersome and time-consuming type of photography that simply may be unnecessary for the majority of model photos. But, each to his own.

 

Cheers -

John