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| A charging fly. |
Macro Photography.
How else can you walk around a dump and come back with 100 extremely unique pictures worthy of printing? This is a style of photography that opens the door to an infinite list of possibilities. The most boring of scenes can be made interesting. But what if that standard macro lens just doesn't get you quite close enough? Well, there might be a solution to consider.
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| Tip of a ball point pen. |
What is a macro lens and what is so special about it?
A lot of camera lenses these days have the word "macro" on them somewhere, which doesn't really mean anything at all. All it is telling the user (or buyer) is how close you can place the lens to a subject, and still be able to focus. That is, your minimum working distance between the camera's sensor and the subject. But this doesn't make it a true macro lens.
So what is a macro lens? Well, it is a lens that let's you focus close enough to the subject so that the image being captured on the sensor is at least life size. Let me explain...
Take an old roll of film, and hold it against your computer screen in front of you. If you are shooting with film, or have a full frame sensor in your digital camera, whatever is enclosed inside that 35mm film frame will be the entire picture taken with a 1x macro lens and its minimum focusing distance. So really, you could take a picture of an old negative with a macro lens, and it will take up the entire frame.
Another way to think of it is, if take a picture of a page in a book with a film camera, have the film developed, and then put the negative from that picture directly on the book where you took the picture, the image on the negative and the original page in the book will be exactly the same size.
Most macro lenses on the market today are 1x life size lenses. They are probably the most common "specialty" lens you can buy. However, they can only get so close. What if you want to take a picture of an ant? Or a mosquito? Or a flake of snow? You could crop the picture down and hope your camera captured enough detail, which is usually okay for posting on the internet, but probably not good enough to print out.
You could buy specialty lenses like Canon's MP-e 65mm 1x-5x lens that will focus up to 5 times life size! But then you are stuck with a very expensive lens that you will use once or twice, otherwise it will just be making your bag heavier. So what else can you do?
Extending the 1x Macro Lens
First, let's talk about how a macro lens works. The reason it can focus so close to a subject is that the element closest to the camera body is suppressed deep within the lens. The greater the distance between the lens element and the camera's sensor, the closer you can get to your subject. So, what happens if you make this distance even greater?
Step 1: Extension Tubes (Spacers for your Lens!)
Extension tubes are simple devices that simply act as spacers between your camera body and the lens. There is no glass inside, they are just hollow tubes (except for the leads that allow the camera and lens to communicate). Extension tubes allow any lens (typically over 50mm) to be turned into a macro lens for close up shots. They sacrifice the ability to focus on things far away, but let you tighten up your working distance. These are generally available for relatively cheap, and there is nothing stopping you from putting them on what is already a macro lens, thus letting you get even closer than 1x life size!
Step 2: Extenders (AKA Teleconverters)
An extender is effectively a zoom multiplier. There are two standard sizes for most brands. A 1.4x extender, and a 2x extender. The biggest downside to using these devices is that you lose light. The 1.4x extender will lose 1 stop of light (therefore an f/2.8 lens will become an f/4 lens) and the 2x extender will lose 2 stops of light (an f/2.8 lens will become an f/5.6 lens). But realistically, for macro shots, you would likely be using an aperture smaller than f/11 or even f/16 in order to control your depth of field, so this really isn't much of a downside at all. But it will increase the magnification of your lens, getting you even closer to your subject!
Note: Most extenders state that you can't use them with macro lenses due to the position of the elements, but by putting extension tubes between the extender and the lens, this is no longer a problem.
My current setup
So here it is. My current set-up for extreme close ups:
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| My current set-up |
- Canon 5D Mk3
- Canon 2x Extender
- Promaster extension tubes (come in a set of 12mm + 20mm + 36mm = 68mm)
- Canon 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS
- Basic LED ring light (to keep the shutter speed down)
Results?
These are the results. All of these pictures are un-cropped (just re-sized) taken straight from the full frame camera.
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| Just the lens at 2:1 (half) life-size |
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| Just the lens at 1.5:1 life-size |
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| Just the lens at 1:1 life-size |
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| Lens + extension tubes at maximum magnification. Achieves roughly 1.68x magnification. |
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| Lens + extension tubes + 2x extender at maximum magnification. Achieves roughly 3.38x magnification. |
Summary
As you can see, if you already have a 1x macro lens and want to get even closer, you don't have buy a rare and expensive speciality lens to achieve these results. By simply adding an inexpensive extension tube to your kit, and possibly an extender as well for even more impact, you can increase your maximum magnification by a very noticeable amount. Although I wasn't able to quite reach the 5x magnification of Canon's MP-e lens, I was able to get similar results for a whole lot less money.
