Whilst tidying the house at the weekend, I went to throw out some old flowers from our lounge. I had forgotten about them and they had started to decay. Before I threw them out I thought I would try a few macro shots. The light was bright outside in the garden, so I put the vase on the garden table and attached a set of extension tubes to my 45-150mm Telephoto.
Extension Tube for Macro Photography.
The extension tubes basically move the lens further out from the sensor which means for a normal lens I can get closer to the subject as the minimum focusing distance is a lot further than a dedicated macro lens. A macro lens can be quite expensive, so using extension tube is a cheaper alternative.
I didn’t have much time to spend taking these photos as I was getting the house ready for a dinner party, so I didn’t even get a tripod setup. The light was strong so I was confident that would counter balance the couple of stops of light reduction caused by the extension tubes. I did dial in a 1/3 stop of over exposure compensation on the Lumix G5 camera body.
On some of these photos I got quite a shallow depth of field. I had a few duds where I must have moved/breathed too much as I took the shot and the point of focus slipped due to the depth of field, but I generally got shots I was pleased with.
The photos below are fairly raw from the camera. All I have done is adjust the exposure levels and add a little vibrancy in Lightroom. I am very pleased with the results considering I tried to do the entire shoot in less than 15 minutes.
Macro photography using an Extension Tube (Lumix G5 45mm F4.5 ISO160 1/160 sec)
Macro photography using an Extension Tube (Lumix G5 45mm F4 ISO160 1/100 sec)
Macro photography using an Extension Tube (Lumix G5 45mm F5 ISO160 1/200 sec)
Macro photography using an Extension Tube (Lumix G5 45mm F4 ISO160 1/160 sec)
Macro photography using an Extension Tube (Lumix G5 45mm F4.5 ISO160 1/160 sec)
Macro photography using an Extension Tube (Lumix G5 45mm F4.5 ISO160 1/160 sec)
Macro photography using an Extension Tube (Lumix G5 45mm F4 ISO160 1/100 sec)
Macro photography using an Extension Tube (Lumix G5 45mm F5 ISO160 1/250 sec)
Macro photography using an Extension Tube (Lumix G5 45mm F5 ISO160 1/160 sec)
Stephen Haunts Photography 