Macro Photography on a Budget

Hello everyone and thank you for coming to CameraZone.ca.  This is the Camera Zone review of the Meike Macro Lens Extention Tube Adapters.

If you have never experience macro photography, your in for a treat.  Being able to get up close and personal with your subject is super cool and fun.  Macro photography allows you to get close to your subject and get a sharp focus to show the details.  When you use a normal lens, that is not macro capable, you will find that you may be able to zoom in close but can not get the focus needed to get a sharp image.  With a macro lens, you can do this and in this review, I talk about an alternative to the expensive macro lenses by brand companies.

The Meike Extention Tube Adapters attach to your regular lens and extend the focus to get up close and personal with your subject.  There upsides and downsides to this process which I will talk about a little later.

To attach the tubes, you simply line up the markers to your lens marks and twist as any lens would normally attach, then mount it to your camera.  

Once you have attached the tube extensions, select your subject (ant, flower, etc) then point and shoot.  You will notice that the focus plane is very narrow and you will need to be very precise to get a sharp image.  The best practice, in this case, is to use a tripod whenever possible.  You may also notice that opening your aperture all the way, may let in more light but it will also decrease your focal plane.  To solve this issue, close your aperture to something between f16 to f22.  This will help give you a little more range.  Next, make sure you have enough light.  Use a flash or other light source.  If you are outside and have the sun, that may be enough for your needs.  You can also open your shutter for a little longer to let in more light.  As long as your subject is not moving, this will work.

To get even better results with a non-moving subject, you can use a method called focus stacking.  Focus stacking is a process where you would take multiple photos and focus on different parts of the image, then combining the images later in software to create one final image.  I recommend Photoshop or as free software called Helicon Focus. There are a bunch of tutorials on Youtube for focus stacking.

Are these Macro Extention Tube Adapters worth is to buy and use?  For me, the answer was yes.  I use them all the time for product shots and videos.  The price is awesome and I have gotten some great results using them.

Thank you for coming to Camera Zone.  I hope this review was helpful and you learned a little about macro photography.