Bees, no macro

[billtils]

Catching up on Project 52 ... and making the best of what was available to me today, namely the garden and the 70-300mm lens on the X-T5

[Geoff F]

I started macro photography by using a Canon 70-300 lens plus a 25 mm extension tube. Although it is somewhat limited in how close you can get to a subject it often gives better focus depth, as your images show.

[billtils]

Yes indeed! Thanks Geoff, I do have an extension tube somewhere but not in any rush to try it until more familiar with the 70-300 in general.

[DanK]

I may be wrong, but if I'm right, mid-length telephoto zooms vary a lot in their minimum working distances. However, a lot of them are fine for whole-body shots of big bugs. You can use an extension tube to decrease the MWD, as Geoff says. It's a distant memory, but I think that the few times I used a telephotos for bugs, I used a teleconverter to magnify the image rather than a tube to get closer.

[Geoff F]

Yes, Dan, I have also used a converter but you need to remember that most converters will only fit certain lenses. You can often overcome that problem by adding a small extension tube (eg 10mm) between the converter and the lens. This usually works well but you lose the ability to focus at infinity. Which is OK until you look up and see something really interesting, too far away, which requires a quick shot and by the time you have removed the tube it is too late.

[DanK]

Yes, Dan, I have also used a converter but you need to remember that most converters will only fit certain lenses. You can often overcome that problem by adding a small extension tube (eg 10mm) between the converter and the lens. This usually works well but you lose the ability to focus at infinity. Which is OK until you look up and see something really interesting, too far away, which requires a quick shot and by the time you have removed the tube it is too late.

Yes, I've used a 10mm tube also to fit a teleconverter to lenses that aren't designed to accept them.

[Chataignier]

I've got extension tubes for Fuji X mount and have used them with good results in conjunction with the 16-80mm, but I had focussing problems when trying the 70-300mm.

My preferred macro set up, however, is still the Canon 100mm f2.8L macro fitted to the Fuji X mount with a Fringer adaptor. I have tried that with extension tubes also, but as you presumably know, extension tubes do not have much effect on longer focal lengths. Not really worth the hassle.

ref : https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tu...es-closeup.htm

[Geoff F]

Extension tubes get you closer to the subject which is fine with static subjects including flowers but not so useful when getting closer scares away a nervous live subject like an insect. Which is why I use a 180 mm macro lens plus a 1.4x converter for insect shots.

One other thing to mention about converters. A 1.4x unit should work with most lenses but a 2x magnification may cause focus problems depending on the lens. I think you need a lens which is less than F8 including the magnification factor. Which means a 2.8 lens would be OK but not a 4.5 lens with a x2 converter.

I always manually focus with macro subjects anyway because autofocus has chosen the wrong focus point too many times.

[DanK]

https://photography.dkoretz.net/BugsA few thoughts:

First, to avoid confusion: sensor size has nothing to do with magnification, and one should avoid "full frame equivalent focal lengths" in discussing magnification. Magnification is the size of the image cast relative to the size of the subject, and that doesn't change when you change the size of the sensor.

However, sensor size does affect angle of view, which does affect how much magnification one needs to fill the frame.

The effect of extension does decrease with the focal length of the lens, but the precise amount is hard to calculate because of a number of design factors that affect this at very close distances. I've never taken the time to master the technical details. The most accurate way to calculate this is to measure a ruler on your own. However, two macro calculators I have used came up with identical estimates, which are roughly consistent with my experience. Using a 100 mm macro lens, maximum magnification increases very roughly with (FL+ext)/FL. In other words, if the lens has a native max of 1:1, adding 10mm of extension will result in a maximum magnification of 1.1:1. For that reason, I rarely use less than a 36mm extension on a 100mm lens if I am hunting bugs.

I agree with Geoff: at very close distances, with the narrow DOF one gets in macro work, I have rarely found AF helpful and usually focus manually and move the camera. However, I haven't tried this with a good, modern mirrorless camera.

While I agree with Geoff that an extension tube on a 100mm lens makes things very difficult, I've never used a macro lens longer than 100mm, and a lot of my images were taken with that lens and a 36 mm tube. You can see lots of them at https://photography.dkoretz.net/Bugs. It just requires a high tolerance for frustration, which frankly doesn't come naturally to me.

One last thought about sensor size. What really matters in the end is how many pixels one has on the subject. If two sensors of different sizes have the same pixel density, and if the magnification is such that the image will fit on the smaller one, it makes absolutely no difference in terms of magnification which you use. Cropping the larger-sensor image to the angle of view of the smaller will give you the identical image (leaving aside issues of photosite size). So filling the frame is just a poor proxy for what matters. The reason smaller-sensor cameras are often better for this purpose is because they usually have a higher pixel density, so cropping an image from a larger sensor would result in fewer pixels on the subject.

I've been using an old 7D for bugs for years to get the higher pixel density. If money were no object, I would buy an OM Systems micro-four-thirds camera for this purpose. It has a higher pixel density, plenty of pixels for this purpose, and larger depth of field.

[billtils]

Thanks for the input to the discussion folks. I "discovered" shooting close ups without a macro lens a few years ago when walking to the car after a birding outing - it was my Nikon days and I had the superb 300PF lens +1.4 TC mounted. I saw this butterfly in a "photograph me" pose and did just that.





I've owned macro lenses from Tamron, Nikon, and Zeiss (and briefly when I moved to Fuji, their 60mm version) but I'm not what could be described as a hardcore macro shooter and ended up happy with a "normal" lens. I find the IQ acceptable and the weight saving a bonus .

(I did tinker with an extension tube but consistently had focus problems).