MACRO on the cheap… (wit' a couple o' TIPs).

I'd love to have a macro lens to play with (–anyone have one they'd like to give me?). I just don't have the cash at this point. If I  COULD make it pay for itself, I'd probably consider buying one. In the meantime, I'll try the time honored method of photographers-on-the-cheap everywhere, and use a decent set of aluminum macro tubes.

I bought the pair that I used in these photos for about 10 bucks. Back in school (80's), there were guys who did the old (turn the lens around) trick… and  a few who crafted reverse lens mountings using mailing tubes. These were always great for fiddling around with macro, but clearly not a solution that you'd want to use with paying accounts.

I'd highly encourage the tubes at their minimal 10$ price tag. For about 75 bucks, I could have purchased some with the proper EF lens contacts for my Canon. [but hey..who am I? Rockefeller?]

Just a few tips from my afternoon with the tubes.

Boy! Coins sure are dirty close up.
I wound up using a “nifty-fifty” lens on the end of the tubes.  You can see slight chromatic aberration on the coins and oatmeal when shot against a black glass surface. I played a bit with the aberration-correction in Adobe C.R.E., but can still see the slight fringe on the left and right.

You can also see that by the time I got to the dime I had opened the windows more in my living room, and used my hands to reflect light onto the dime (may also want to try a very small piece of paper).

The lens is very tight to the objects, so the light is sometimes tricky.
Because of the lighting, you may wind up setting your shutter for as long as a few seconds, so a TRIPOD and using the camera's shutter timer or a remote is probably good form on these.

You can also see in the quarter how really shallow your depth-of-field will be. "IN GOD WE TRUST" is just trailing out  on the E and the T, and you can see on the front end STATES is outside the plane. Your aperture is not "communicated" through the cheaper tubes. It will read "0" and revert to your fastest stop (on my equipment at least).

I learned from others' posts on using these simple tubes that you can use the aperture lock on your camera with the lens mounted as normal…then unscrew the lens while aperture lock is still depressed, then quickly attach the tubes to hold the aperture at its last setting.  I used f 8 as a starting point with this "locking" technique that will give you more depth of field (as in the dime), but require more light and potentially exposure time.

The mandarin orange wound up a bit dark, so I fiddled with aperture and exposure time to get the texture. Its a bit dark (which I don't mind terribly given the light "valley" in the skin crease behind it. 

The rolled oats had a bit of the aberration on the farthest oat against the black background glass. I noticed you get almost "bokeh" effect of reflective items on the glass if the exposure is too high, so this exposure is the combo of acceptable aperture and focus against the moderated speed (1/6 sec).

To recap: 

these macro tubes (photodiox) are fun to experiment with…but I don't think that anyone doing macro with a proper lens is going to bother with these (even the higher end ones that do communicate between  your camera and lens).  A macro lens is just easier and more expedient in more diverse use scenarios.

You'll also need to have a tripod! No way to hand hold on some of these.

A  decent understanding of aperture, shutter-speed, iso and focus (and the dexterity/ability to manual focus while adjusting your tripod for distance) is also a must. 

If you don't have a good window letting light in, you'll also want good constant light as well (I use a CREE 6500K LED work light I picked up on sale at the hardware store, and use it on other items as needed).  OVERALL, it's well worth the 10 bucks to experiment with though.