We had a good wildflower year here in and around Taos, but more specifically, in my yard. We had poppies, cleomes, sunflowers, and of course the cacti bloomed. This year I wanted to try something a little different from my usual wildflower photography, so I picked up a 12mm extension tube to experiment with.
If you’re not familiar with extension tubes, they look similar to a tele-extender, but unlike an extender, the tubes have no optical element(s), i.e. tubes are hollow. Extension tubes work by moving the lens farther away from the film or digital sensor in the camera. Doing this allows the lens to focus closer producing greater magnification at the loss of being able to focus on infinity, in fact when using tubes you have a very narrow range of focus and depth of field to work with.
Both the first and second images shown here were photographed using a Canon 24-70mm/2.8L lens at approximately 60mm and f/6.3. The last images was captured using the Canon TS-E 45mm tilt shift lens with a 1.4x extender at f/11. All images were captured with a Canon 5D , 12mm extension tube, and a portable reflector to cast even light on the flowers.
When working with extension tubes, it’s important to be aware of how close the front element of your lens is to the subject. I had to clean pollen off of my lens several times.
Please click on any image for an expanded view.