Second macro outing - some help would be appreciated

[g4gxl]

Day two with my new gadgets.
Tried a borrowed 50mm lens on the extension tubes.
Lighting from a Dorr ring flash.

I felt happier using my 28-80 set to 80mm than the 50mm, although a non-zoom is smaller and one less thing to adjust.

What focal length do people usually use with extension tubes ?
Should I be looking for something like a 90mm macro ?

f/22 just doesn't seem to give me enough DoF, do experienced macro TOGs look for lenses with smaller apertures ?

Had lots of problems with focus. The image is just too dim with the lens stopped down to f/22. Am thinking of rigging up some high power LEDs as modelling lights - do other people do this ?

Anyhow, here are the attempts from today -

Photo 1 - ladybird, untouched JPEG straight off camera

Photo 2 - same ladybird, with a bit of tweaking in Lightroom

Photo 3 - bumble bee flew off as I approached, is that the sting sticking out ?

 

[jgs001]

The Ladybirds look pretty good. I really like the second one, perhaps a touch of fill light in LR. It might be worth looking at shooting raw, rather than jpg as that will allow you more tweaks. Shame about the Bee.. not sure about that being the sting though. I generally use f16 and accept that the DOF is going to be virtually nill, especially when I wind my 55-250 out to 250mm.. (it's virtually nill even with f32). I've tried focus stacking but have had no success at getting any form of halfway decent result from it.

 

[g4gxl]

Thanks John.

I see you have a Raynox.
I guess that could be the answer to a couple of my problems.

With tubes I lose the ability to open up the lens for focussing and stopdown for the shot. The image is so dim that it is difficult to compose the image and focusing is hard unless there are some contrasty straight lines in the shot. Focus is manual - generally by changing distance to subject than using focus ring.

Does autofocus still work OK with a Raynox ?

Steve

 

[Dogfish_magnet]

Which tubes are you using ? if there not auto tubes which retain aperture control from the body there pretty useless as there a pain to use, using something like kenko autotubes allows you to still see nice bright images in the viewfinder and the lens will only step to your selected aperture when you take the image. When shooting macro i tend to find it easier to manual focus by moving the camera, as altering the focus ring will change the magnification and for normal macro usually shoot around f9-f16, anything above f16 can induce diffraction blur and unfortunately shallow DOF is unavoidable with Macro.

 

[jgs001]

Steve, I went for the Raynox for that very reason. Half the price of a set of connected tubes, full lens control (the IS still works and does help). I've a set of the cheapy ebay tubes, and they are, as you say, a pain to use.

 

[g4gxl]

Paul

Thanks for the info about the Kenko tubes. Mine have a chip built in so I can use AE exposure control but I lose the ability to control the aperture. Actually it's a right pain as I have to set the aperture, press the DOF preview button and then remove the lens at the same time - that's the only way I have found to stop down the leses that have no aperture ring . OTH they were less than £20 and I'll get my monies worth out of them for sure.

Interesting that you shoot at f/16 - I had assumed smaller was better. I'll open up the lens a bit next time, should help a bit in the viewfinder too.

Cheers,
Steve