Tried out my extension tubes again in the garden the other day, managed to find a boring fly and a ladybird! The tubes are very hard and cumbersome to use, so I've really not used them much.

Also, Ive always had a weird desire to photograph a rape field, and so I jumped out for a couple of quick snaps on my way back from the stables at the weekend!

Wow, very impressive...

What are these tubes you speak of? I can see this ending up with me parting with more money!

Extension tubes to go on the back of my macro lens. Just allows me to get a bit more macro! My lens is 1:1 macro already, so it makes it even more than that.

what extension tubes are you using.. And nice pictures btw.

Kenko tubes, all 3 stacked to make 68mm extension on my 105mm macro. Thanks

I bought cheap ones for tenner and i liked them, but without autofocus they are not easy to use...

Some really great skills there!

Tubes and insects = lots of patience!

Loz I like the photos, but when I read the thread title I had a feeling what I was in for. Brrrrrrrrrgh sends shivers down my legs

I bought cheap ones for tenner and i liked them, but without autofocus they are not easy to use...

I didn't bother, I just went for the real thing! They will autofocus, meter, fire the flash etc, however in general to take a decent macro shot you need everything on manual - the focus and the camera itself. It never picks the correct shutter speeds etc. I need to do it myself. I tend to just focus in as close as I can and then brace myself and move sllightly back and forth until the correct part is in focus, then shoot - and hope for the best! lol

Loz I like the photos, but when I read the thread title I had a feeling what I was in for. Brrrrrrrrrgh sends shivers down my legs

haha! They are creepy, but I love bug macros, so interesting to see them closer than you can with your eye. That's what I love about macro, it's what distingushes it from all other types of photography

some lovely photo's there, really nice. I'm not a great picture taker myself, but took this one of a Southern Hawker a few years back with a Samsung S70? 7Mp.

Wow thats one cool bug!! I can never find interesting bugs to photograph :(

good places are water meadows or wetlands

They always fly away when I try to snap a bird or insect :'(

I bought cheap ones for tenner and i liked them, but without autofocus they are not easy to use...

I've seen on fleabay they do AF ones for around £35-40. I am tempted to give it a go since they're only metal tubes, seeing these lovely pics starting to my wallet itchy.

Do you have a dedicated macro lens? Otherwise you won't get the required results! And if you do have the lens you can get pretty awesome macro without tubes anyway. If you look on my Flickr of facebook page all the other macros were done without tubes

Do you possibly have some which are done with tube and without macro? I don't have a macro lens currently and its going to be a while before I do :(

Lol like your photosteam, and the way you categorised it , I don't think I have patience to do it by the type of photograph lol, mine is date/event based.

No, I had never tried to put tubes on a non macro lens (why would I? lol) but I just tried it and I can't even focus ... it searches for focus but can't see a thing. Can't focus it manually either. Having said that it's meant to be possible to use extension tubes on non macro lenses so I don't know how that works lol. Perhaps I need to use less extension?

And as for the flickr organisation, I don't add many photos at a time, so it's easy enough to add them to the correct set! lol. To be honest, it is so easy that even if there is a lot of photos, you just pick up and drag them to whatever group, it's done in no time at all!

No, I had never tried to put tubes on a non macro lens (why would I? lol) but I just tried it and I can't even focus ... it searches for focus but can't see a thing. Can't focus it manually either. Having said that it's meant to be possible to use extension tubes on non macro lenses so I don't know how that works lol. Perhaps I need to use less extension?

Kenko tubes are not AF (so it says on google) so you'll need to set camera and lens to fully manual to adjust focus etc. I had a quick go by simply holding the lens and camera away from each other by about 1cm but it was hard to stop the light leakage to get a decent image. Would like to know if its worth investing on an extension tube or save up for a macro lens. What do you think?

Well mine auto focus and also say automatic on the box? Suppose there could be different types. Although I have said above I did it on manual too, as that how I use them anyway as autofocus isn't much use for macro anyway, but it still didn't work.

Well I can't really advise seeing as I can't get it to work with a normal lens!

Lol oh, google giving me silly results again then haha, thanks for trying anyway.

Keep us updated with new shoots, I really like your work

Extension tubes to go on the back of my macro lens. Just allows me to get a bit more macro! My lens is 1:1 macro already, so it makes it even more than that.

Ha ha. I thought by extension tubes you meant floro light tubes to attract the bugs. Shows how much I know

Great pics though. The fly detail is amazing