Yesterday I was bored.

I got out my macro extension tubes, which I picked up about 10 years ago from a Chinese supplier on e-Bay — back then, Amazon was just a baby and didn’t have these kind of products. It took a month for my set to arrive, shipped by extremely slow mail from China.

As I inferred, they’re difficult to work with. There’s no autofocus. The focus plane is very narrow, and unless your eyes are super sharp, it’s tough to get your subjects in focus. If you’re interested in trying extension tubes, shell out an extra $20-30 for AF. Save yourself the headache.

On top of that, the highlights tend to look weird. I’m sure there’s a scientific reason for why, something to do with moving the lens away from the sensor. But I haven’t investigated much.

The bright, reflective spots tend to get…sparkly. Prismatic little sparks. It’s a little interesting, but when you’re trying to get a decent macro picture of whatever, you don’t necessarily want weird distractions in it.

This is my favorite shot from yesterday.

A bit more abstract. Or phallic, depending on how dirty your mind is.

I’m not really into flower macros, though, and went looking for different things to try with varying success.

For those of you interested in exploring macros, there’s a gadget called a “macro rail slider”. It lets you make minuscule adjustments to your camera’s position so that you can physically move it to focus.

Having that would allow for a more easy and accurate focus; my method yesterday was a bit of a trial and error, even with using the live view on my camera.