Stir crazy lockdown macro.

Valvebounce

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Hi Folks.
Macro shots of stuff found in the house! No cropping.

The full stack of extension tubes is 65mm!

I’m afraid on some of the shots I have missed critical focus slightly, I had the camera set up looking down on to a window sill in the sun and as the session progressed the lubrication in the lens must have been thinning in the heat as the lens zoom started to move unaided and I didn’t notice as I was doing this whilst on a FaceTime call with my two photography buddies, trying to show them how macro is done and answer their questions, fortunately they both have extension tubes but neither of them had lens reversing rings.

Although we have done a group session on macro before it was a couple of years ago and they had pretty much forgotten all I showed them.

Orange with 17-85mm on full stack of extension tubes.
IMG_0006_DxO by Graham Stretch, on Flickr

Pound coin with 17-85mm reversed on full stack of extension tubes.
IMG_0018_DxO by Graham Stretch, on Flickr

Queen’s face all scarred up on a pound coin with 17-85mm reversed on full stack of extension tubes.
IMG_0024_DxO by Graham Stretch, on Flickr

Part number inside a Lego brick, normally nearly invisible.
IMG_0028_DxO by Graham Stretch, on Flickr

The join line where the flap is sealed down on a pre-decimalisation coin envelope.
IMG_0030_DxO by Graham Stretch, on Flickr

No not a sea anemone, a tuft from a carpet!
IMG_0059_DxO by Graham Stretch, on Flickr

A nut found outside, looks like it has been stepped on or driven over a few times!
IMG_0041_DxO by Graham Stretch, on Flickr
More shots in my Flickr album.
Please join in if you have some shots taken during lockdown.

Stay safe, stay in if you can, be well please.

Cheers, Graham.

Ps, I should also state that although I was trying to teach my friends, I am no expert! But you could probably tell that already! :LOL:
 
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Valvebounce

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Hi beforeEos Cameras.
Hmm, no rail, my setup is basic, real basic, some pictures of the setup.
I can’t work out why the photos have rotated on upload, sorry!

A Kennet Benbo tripod.
0D3EB948-B6CE-49C3-A180-3644FBB5449C.jpeg

Putting it up is like wrestling an octopus, slacken the handle and everything goes loose!
56ADC5D3-B29C-455C-8F2F-49989430EC37.jpeg

A Manfrotto 410 geared head.
FF2D02F0-F1E9-408E-A24D-50B67E287B14.jpeg

7DII, cheap macro extension tubes, even cheaper lens reversing ring and my old 17-85 as that is what I bought the reversing ring for!
11AB252D-BA83-494F-91D0-965D59781D2D.jpeg

A little red Lego trolley that my youngest nephew made, great for rolling the subject under the lens and back out to change subjects.
373600BA-4258-4B48-8F7D-C8C43ADDE576.jpeg

Closer shot of the camera / lens setup.
2BC67572-4117-4257-AD42-DFD62BC20507.jpeg

Benbo by Kennet!
C61A20D3-BCFE-46C9-BB00-3AC6FD6201EA.jpeg

The Benbo is a cumbersome ungainly thing to set up but it is very stable once up and firm enough to support the camera and lens hanging out some way past the legs, this is no where near the limit!

Cheers, Graham.

it all looks great what rail and tripod system you useing
 
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Valvebounce

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Hi YuengLinger.
I don’t think we (UK) will be reopening any time soon, we are being told that we have not peaked yet and to expect the lockdown to be extended on Monday when the first 3 week period ends.

Cheers, Graham.

We should reopen soon. Enough hysteria. But in the meantime, keep shooting!
 
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Valvebounce

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Hi Joe.
The tubes certainly work well, my trial and error technique tells me that shorter lenses react better to the tubes, something to do with tube to focal length ratios I suspect? I found a short zoom lens works best as you basically focus with the zoom and then fine focus with the focus mechanism.
Outdoors I have used my Manfrotto with the centre column inverted, also when the lens is horizontal you don’t get the zoom creeping out! :rolleyes:
My thoughts on my set copied from another post.
My set is just like this but in black and silver, they are listed as metal, don’t be fooled, the barrels are some form of plastic, possibly as complicated as engineering composite, but they are not metal, only the end caps are metal, I’m tempted to say that the silver finish on mine is chrome, it looks too bright for polished anodised aluminium.
The body end of each tube has a full metal bayonet, the lens end has a metal face reinforcing the plastic receiver.
I doubt they are as strong as the Canon version, but I have just had the 24-105 f/4L mounted on them and I think I used the 70-200 f/2.8 L II mounted on them previously, I have also had the 1DsIII hanging on the tubes on the back of my 100-400 L II when I was trying to work out which lenses worked with tubes and how well!

Cheers, Graham.
 
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stevelee

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My impression is that tubes do less for lenses that already focus rather close. I got my current tubes Sunday just before I returned the rented 24 mm ts-e lens on Monday, so of course I was keen to try it out on a tube. It did OK, and the tilt worked nicely for focusing. I then tried the lens up close without any tube. There was not that much difference.

After I returned that lens, I tried tubes on the 100 mm non-L macro. By itself the lens focuses down to 1:1. With a 25 mm tube, it will go gown to a 70% reduction, according to my shots of a ruler and rough calculation. In other words, one inch on the ruler almost fills the width of the sensor.

I haven’t tried tubes with my 100-400 mm zoom which already focuses close. Years ago I bought some cheap tubes with no electrical connections and tried them with my not so hot 75-300 mm lens. Just messing around I got a shot of a portion of a small chrysanthemum bloom that I like so well that there is a 16” x 20” print of it across the room from me as I type this. That convinced me to buy a real macro lens.
 
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stevelee

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With 68mm of extension tubes, the 100mm macro lens focused as close as possible appears to project 1/2 inch of image on to 1.035 inches on the sensor. I'm not sure of notation. Is that a 1:0.483 magnification? Or anyway, the sensor image is 2.07 times the size of the object.

IMG_2365.jpg

At that magnification, a US dime looks like this on a full frame:

IMG_2367.jpg

And a 100% crop of that shot looks like this:

dime100crop.jpg

Both shots were taken at f/22 on the lens, so you can calculate the effective aperture with the tubes. By a quick rule of thumb, you would get something like f/70 in this situation, hence the exposure time of 8 seconds even with the ring light set on high.
 
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Valvebounce

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Hi Kodakrome.
Very nice shot, please keep posting.
Indoors or out doesn’t matter providing you are at home and not wandering the streets if you are not supposed to be! (y) Mine are only indoors as I was doing a group FaceTime and it would not be fair on the neighbours to hear that going on! ;)

Cheers, Graham.
 
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SteveC

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At that magnification, a US dime looks like this on a full frame:

View attachment 189719

And a 100% crop of that shot looks like this:

View attachment 189720

Both shots were taken at f/22 on the lens, so you can calculate the effective aperture with the tubes. By a quick rule of thumb, you would get something like f/70 in this situation, hence the exposure time of 8 seconds even with the ring light set on high.

With respect to the coin, is there some reason it doesn't look very sharp? I know depth of field is a challenge (and the coin does look about the same regardless of distance from the lens), but your 100% crop simply doesn't look nearly as sharp as it could be. (I say this having photographed MANY coins.)

That aside, you've certainly proved you're at better than 1:1 with that setup!
 
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stevelee

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I’ll go back and look at the whole original. I wondered about that myself. It could be a combination of things. The coin itself is worn to begin with. I purposely shot the coin at an angle, but maybe not with good reason. Maybe there is a spot in the picture that is better in focus. I don‘t know how the tubes affect diffraction. Does the result reflect the diffraction of f/70ish instead of f/22? I’ve made pictures with the lens by itself at f/22 that were sharper than I would have expected given what I have read about diffraction. Even f/32 has shown only slight softening beyond f/22 that was not unattractive in effect, maybe a bit less clinical looking. Diffraction is a likely suspect, especially if I don’t find a sharper area on the shot. The detail in the wood of the ruler looks sharper than the coin to me. I’ll see what settings I used for that shot.

I didn’t use a delay, as I would with an important shot. So there my have been some vibration. And there were a couple shots after I unplugged the remote release. Maybe I will try again using a wireless remote and a 2 second delay.

My purpose for these tests was to see how well different things worked, so I could make good choices when taking real pictures. Your comments are helpful to me, and I hope my results will be helpful to you.

I think the camera battery may be dying. I’m getting just a few shots in. When I turn the camera off to change tubes, about the second time, it won’t come back on until I recharge the battery. The battery health indicator shows 2 out of 3, so it should hold a charge better than that. I got the camera in September of whatever year the 6D2 came out. I have smaller camera batteries much older and with many more shots on them that are still going strong. I turned off GPS, though it was already in the mode that turned it off when I turn off the camera. I don’t need to be told the coordinates of my house over and over, even with continental drift. Probably I should order a new battery anyway. I mention this to explain why my enthusiasm for multiple experiments has diminished, because of the tedium of dealing with the battery.
 
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