Another guy who's just got extension tubes!

I've seen a few people posting in the past couple of weeks about their new extension tubes. I bought a set of auto Pentax extension tubes from eBay for AUS$44 and they arrived today. They are used and rather old but in awesome condition, except for the leather case which is cracking a bit and the outer box which is scuffed (although the original price sticker of ¥13,000 is still clearly visible). I guess tubes are not generally an item that gets knocked around...

My first shot, of my Aerospace, is below. Straight out of the camera except for a resize. That's with all three tubes stacked, using the kit 18-55 at 55 mm. Wow, that depth of field (or lack of!). At least the dust spots on the watch crystal are out of focus (sigh... I swear, I wiped it with a microfibre cloth. LOL). It was good fun, I can see these getting some use. Sorry about the JPEG artefacts; saving at '7' in PSE5 was appalling, this was a save at '9', beyond that file size started to bloat a tad.

[roentarre]

Congradulation.

I bought an extension tube about a year ago (45 US dollars) and it really is a creative tool. Difficult to use I have to admit and to get a accurate focus is pretty hard too.

Sure your view finder would be so dark hooking this on Da 18-55 and you did it pretty well here.

you will have fun with this for sure.

[G M Fude]

Thanks! Yeah it was a bit gloomy looking through the viewfinder, made me raise a sweat a bit getting just part of that right wing sharp (interesting the zone of focus -- it apears to extend into the LCD display, bottom right). I should have shot outside for more light but hey it was 40 degrees, that probably would've raised even more of a sweat...

[distorted_vision]

nice one mate.. ull have fun with these.. i love my set.. how do u find the auto focus?? mine disable all auto features as they do not have the contact points for the sensors etc.. so al my tube shots are manual..

[G M Fude]

No, my set aren't auto focus, they have the little lever that stops down the lens from maximum aperture when you take the photo -- assuming it's not a DA lens, which doesn't have an aperture ring at all. I guess 'auto' means 'auto aperture stop-down', but doesn't work on the latest Pentax lenses, AFAIK (unless I've missed something vital). Never mind; I grew up without auto focus (first camera was a Minolta SRT101 with a 58mm 1.4 lens).

I will be a little less ambitious with my next macro photos and use maybe one or two rings instead of all three! And I'll do some outside work, maybe tonight after the cool change hits and the insects come out for the rain. Extension tubes just seem a bit more 'pure' or elemental than screwing on close-up filters (which are probably easier to use and maybe just as good picture quality, LOL).