A Macro Photography Story…

Years ago, think mid 1970’s, I started shooting some macro photographs. The lens I used was the Nikon 55mm f/3.5 Micro-Nikkor. The camera, obviously a Nikon was probably a Nikon FM. And I was shooting Kodachrome 25, the absolute best color transparency ever.

My subjects were mushrooms, other fungi and wild flowers. I used natural light and sometimes used a small white card or aluminum foil to fill in shadows or just to increase the amount of light I had to work with. Here are three examples.

Recently I joined three local photographers for a macro photography outing. I no longer have a macro lens but do have 10mm and 16mm extension tubes. So I used those with my 12-200mm lens.

One of the photographers along for the adventure was shooting with a speed light mounted on her camera and a large diffusion hood attached to the speed light. Apparently that’s all the rage these days. If you’re going to shoot macro photographs, that’s a must have. Do a search on YouTube and you’ll see what I mean.

I will say that the results she got were fantastic. But to me, it seemed a bit much.

So I decided to try a somewhat different approach. I bought a small speedlight, a Godox TT350, and mounted it on my camera. I added the rectangular snap-on diffusion dome to the speedlight.

Did a few quick test shots of a flower to dial in the power setting on the speedlight and the ISO, shutter speed, and f-stop on the camera. Once that was done, I went back out and photographed a Japanese Beetle on a rose. I was quite happy with the results.

ISO 400, 1/250 @ f/11

ISO 400, 1/250 @ f/11

Now there are disadvantages to using extension tubes rather than having a macro lens. The first is that you only have a certain working distance, there is no flexibility to go in closer or further away. You could use just one of the extension rings to change the camera to subject distance, but then the degree of magnification would also change.

The second is that you cannot use that combination as a regular lens. With a macro lens, you don’t have to just shoot macro photographs. You can use it like any other lens. I’d have to remove the extension tubes in order to do that. 

But extension tubes are a very good inexpensive way to get started with macro photography.

“Tri-X, f/8, and be there.“