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Extension tubes?

Mullardman

Moderately extreme...
I have an old Canon 450D with several lenses inc. a Sigma 70-300. I'm looking at a set of extension tubes ( Kenko) for around £150. Thinking about more reach for garden bird shots and maybe macro.
Obviously not looking for high end stuff but what does the team think?
 
Mull,

Extension tubes will let you focus a lens closer, but if the lens you’re using isn’t optimized for real close-up photography the results may not be stellar. But if you just want to focus a bit closer than the lens’s minimum focusing distance extension tubes will work fine. I have a short extension tube that works well on my 300mm f/4.5. It gets me a couple of feet closer to the subject without any egregious loss of quality — i.e., instead of 10 feet being the minimum focusing distance it’s something like 8 feet with the tube.)

If you’re more interested in taking true macro shots (pix with a reproduction ratio of, say, 1:2 or 1:1), a third-party macro lens from Sigma or Tamron might be about the same money as a set of tubes.

Joe
 
There is no need to go to branded tubes, £30/£40 will do fine.

The cost of a good lens is in the glass, extension tubes are just that, a tube.

Take care

Dave


Not quite.

The cost of a good lens also covers the design and electronics.

Extension tubes need to maintain the electrical contacts as well.
 
Extension tubes need to maintain the electrical contacts as well.

Only if you're not experienced in using a lens manually. Close up photography doesn't need 'point and shoot' speed and convenience. It's also a great learning experience, you can learn a lot about the basics of photography.
 
Only if you're not experienced in using a lens manually. Close up photography doesn't need 'point and shoot' speed and convenience. It's also a great learning experience, you can learn a lot about the basics of photography.

With a Canon EF lens as supported by the OP's camera, it will be wide open all the time, no manual aperture adjustment (only electrically)
 
Thanks for info so far. I think I was getting a bit confused between extension tubes and teleconverters.
The Sigma 70-300 does some pretty good macro stuff as is on its macro setting. Not quite microscopic, but good close ups of the likes of insects on flowers etc.

I'm probably more interested in increasing the 'reach' of my set up for shots of birds and have looked for Canon fit teleconverters for the Sigma 70-300 APO DG. Sigma appear to have them for every lens but.... :(
 
The problem with adding a tc to a 70-300 will be the loss of at least one stop with a 1.4x converter and two stops with a 2x and a reduction in IQ plus the autofocus may well not work at f8 and the viewfinder will be very dark. You may find that cropping to the same magnification will result in the same or slightly better IQ and post processing in LR and Photoshop will produce an acceptable image. Depends how far away the birds are really. To fill the frame something around 600mm is about the minimum to aim for when shooting small birds. The top of the kenko range converters are very good. I use one sometimes on my Nikkor 200 - 500 and it's on a par with the Nikon 1.4 tc. The autofocus on that set up still works, but it's slower even on my D500 which is able to autofocus at f8.
 


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