I recently acquired a mint set of Pentax Auto Extension tubes (from the market place - thanks Kirby) and a nice new Metz 48AF1 flash.

My initial attempts were encouraging (refinement needed with both the flash and the tubes) - but I was excited by the prospect.

So, as part of my local camera club assignment, I decided to try macro around the garden. Flowers dominate - they don't move much!

The set up was initially:

• Sigma 28-70 f2.8 lens (to give me a bit of focusing scope as I don't have the macro rails yet).
  • Most shots were between 50 and 70mm focal length - so between 0.5x and 0.35x magnification I think
  • such a physically large lens makes it almost impossible to get close below 50mm
• manual mode on the camera
  • generally 1/60 or 1/90 exposure
  • aperture set to f22 for reasonable DOF
• a 26mm tube
• the Metz flash with the bounce screen extended and at 45 degrees - in pTTL mode
• tripod & mirror lock up

These are the initial results - click the images to access the full image











Overall, I think it worked reasonably well. The DOF is almost there - just need a macro rail, a right angle finder to help me achieve finer control and maybe a bigger bounce card.

As always, comments and criticism welcome.

Thanks for looking

Cheers