This week I received delivery of two extension tubes for my camera.
Extension tubes connect to your camera between the body and the lens reducing the focusing distance and thus enabling you to use a normal camera lens for macro photography.
For those of you who don’t know ‘Macro Photography’ is extremely close-up photography and it is usually of very small subjects.
So with my new toy fitted to my camera I first tested the extension tubes on a small screw I had lying around to see just how close I could get to my tiny subjects.
Once I was happy with a few test shots I then headed out into the garden to see what miniature marvels I could find.
The day was cloudy and overcast which produces diffused light and is always good for making good images with great colour representation the drawback is you need to let more light into the lens either by increasing the ISO, opening up the aperture or reducing the shutter speed.
Either of these options has a drawback when shooting macro, if you raise the ISO then you get more noise in your final image so I decided I was setting the ISO at 400 which would not give much visible noise at the end.
Therefor I was left with two options a wider aperture or a slower shutter speed.
If you go for a wider aperture then you are reducing your depth of field and as this is narrow anyway when focusing on such small subjects you have to be spot on with your point of focus to ensure that the subject is pin sharp where you need it to be…
i.e. the eyes if it is a creature of some kind or the stamen if it is a flower.
If you go for reducing the shutter speed then you are in danger of getting a blurry subject when the camera is handheld.
Luckily the Sony a7ii has optical image stabilisation built into the camera body so I was able to reduce the shutter speed to 1/125 and still get a pin sharp image when holding the camera.
I shot various subjects around the garden including tiny flowers on a forget-me-not plant to various creepy crawlies that were going about their business.
However my favourite shot and the one I decided to share with you today was this one of a ‘Nursery Web Spider’…
Now I must admit it took me quite a bit of time to get my model to stay still. After picking her out of the grass and placing her on my watering-can all she wanted to do was run and hide in a dark place.
She eventually she stayed still long enough for me to get off a couple of shots, this being the best of them.
Now I know this will not be everyone’s cup of tea but I hope you can appreciate the technique involved in the shot if not the subject.
Until next time Take Care and happy shooting.
Darren
Photo Info: Camera: Sony a7ii, Lens 55-210mm with one 10mm and one 16mm extension tube fitted, Shutter Speed 1/125 at f6.7 ISO 400
