Hi everyone,
I've been wanting to get into macro photography for quite a while, but I've not had the money to buy an actual macro lens (I'm still saving up for the Tamron 90mm f2.8). The closest I have is a Sigma 70-300 macro, which only does 1:2, so it's great for flowers, large insects and the like, but I've always been a bit of a bug nut, with my favourite being jumping spiders, and 1:2 macro just wasn't cutting it for taking photos of a 5mm arachnid. I had a Makinon 135mm f2.8 with sticky aperture blades that I'd been debating attempting to clean for a few months, but I didn't trust my mechanical skills quite enough to actually pull it apart. I finally bit the bullet and started disassembling it, and of course ball bearings went flying, screws got stripped, and I basically ruined the lens. I did learn a valuable lesson, though - a lens with no optics makes a decent set of extension tubes! I attached a rear lens cap with the middle drilled out to the front of the now empty makinon 135mm and preso! Cheap, functioning extendable macro tubes. With the maximum extension of 83mm, I'm getting roughly 1.81:1 macro with my trusty Ricoh XR 50mm f2.0. Unfortunately, the focusing distance is about 2 inches from the front of the lens, so it's not really practical, but it's a heck of a lot better than nothing.
Here's a couple of shots I've taken with it.
A zebra jumping spider
A Damselfly
And a fruit fly
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