Two days ago, I posted on Facebook about the "Macro Extension Tubes" that I purchased for my camera, including this example photograph:I received great responses to the post and knew that it was only a matter of time before I was asked how it was done. I've always been fascinated with insect photography (see here), and wanted something that would get me closer than my standard lenses. I recently found "Macro Extension Tubes," which fit between my camera and lens and enable the lens to focus closer to my subject.There are different size pieces that you can add to the tube, depending on how close you want the lens to get to your subject. Once the tube is on, with lens attached, switch to "live view" on your camera. Most live view functions will allow you to manually zoom in even further to perfect the manual focusing. It's important to know that adding the extension tubes will disable your f/stop functions, so you'll be relying heavily on your shutter speed and ISO to produce the image. This is about the distance I was from a bug I found on the wall. (see below)Once you feel like you have everything in order, start snapping away. Since you don't have an F/stop, your point of focus is going to be very limited. For this particular demonstration, I captured this photo:Notice how the bug is in focus, but the antenna is out of focus? That's due to the limited F/Stop, which will read "00" on your camera. I'm still getting used to the method, and it took me 3-5 shots to get this one image. One last thing to remember is to watch your shutter speed. Anything less than 1/60 of a second will start to get blurry if the camera is hand-held. You may need to use a tripod at times. Hopefully this was informative and answered the "how did you do it" questions I received on Facebook. If you have any questions/comments, please post them below. Within the next couple of weeks, I hope to put up some behind the scenes videos for various projects I'm working on. Thanks for stopping by and feel free to pass this article on to anyone who might be interested!P.S. The Macro attachment was only $12 and the Canon version can be found by clicking on this link: Fotodiox Canon EOS Macro Extension Tube Set Kit for Extreme Close-up and the Nikon version here: Fotodiox Nikon Macro Extension Tube Set Kit for Extreme Close-up
