Extension Tubes and Non-Macro Shooting ???

Let's say I have my macro extension tubes all mounted up and am taking a picture of a bug; I look up and a deer is looking back at me about fifty yards away; I point the camera at the deer and take a couple shots before it disappears.

What effect will the extension tubes have on my deer picture (short tube, medium tube, long tube, or all three) ?

What if the deer were closer, say fifty feet ?

It would depend on what lens you had mounted but mostly you could forget the deer shot. Best to have a second body, not that I normally take two but then I’m only really interested in macro.

Canon EF 300mm f/2.8 L IS Lens focuses from 5.5' to 12.2' with the 25mm extension tube.

Any tube would mean you will probably not get a shot.
At the distance you are talking you would need a tube of 5mm or much less on many lenses and no such tube exists, at least commercially available.

Extension tubes work by reducing the minimum focus distance. However, they also alter the maximum focus distance at the same time. Whether you get the shot or not will depends on the lens you are shooting with and the amount of extension you have added. There was a discussion about this a bit ago. (best post) The post listed is a simple calculator you can set up in excel or some spread sheet, pop in your numbers and get your max focus distance.

The practical answer most likely will be no. If your using a tube, your most likely wanting to get much greater magnification, something approaching 1:1 maybe. So unless you have a extremely long lens, like 600mm, and almost no extension, your max focus distance is going to be a lot closer than 150 feet. Running the numbers it looks as if a 600mm lens with the smallest extension tube, 12mm get you a max focus distance of 100 feet. A 300mm lens with 12mm extension is only 25 feet.

Thanks to everyone for the information.

racketman wrote in post #19154414
It would depend on what lens you had mounted but mostly you could forget the deer shot. Best to have a second body, not that I normally take two but then I’m only really interested in macro.

Canon EF 300mm f/2.8 L IS Lens focuses from 5.5' to 12.2' with the 25mm extension tube.

Yes I often shoot double body, eg

a) 7DII + Tamron 150-600 and 7D or 6D + 100 or 180 mm macro
b) 7DII + 180 mm macro and 7D + 65 mm MP

I lost too many shots trying to swap lens.

racketman wrote in post #19154414
It would depend on what lens you had mounted but mostly you could forget the deer shot.

Choderboy wrote in post #19154434
Any tube would mean you will probably not get a shot.

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I strongly disagree.

I used to leave a 25mm or 20mm extension tube on my 400 f2.8 all the time. . The only effects it had was to add a wee bit of effective focal length so that my shots were framed a little bit tighter, and to suck up some of the light, so I had to over-compensate by about 2/3 of a stop. . And lens would not focus really far out, as infinity focus was made impossible because of the tube, but I could still focus at 600 or 800 feet away, which was plenty far enough ..... I had no interest in photographing deer that were further away than that.

As I said, this is how it worked with the tube on a 400 mm f2.8. . Results may be different if used on a different lens.

To the two of you who said that you will probably not get the shot, were your statements based on actual experience, or just on what you thought would probably happen? . If you based your statements on actual personal experience, I am interested in knowing what lens you used.


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I kind of assumed he would be using a macro lens or something like a 50mm prime rather than a 400mm tele although that would be fine for large insects like Dragonflies and butterflies. With a EF25II tube on my 100mm macro I can focus to about 15" even the 180mm only gets me to 4 feet. A thinner tube changes things but again when he talks about shooting bugs, I had in mind things no larger than bees.

racketman wrote in post #19177716
I kind of assumed he would be using a macro lens or something like a 50mm prime rather than a 400mm tele although that would be fine for large insects like Dragonflies and butterflies. With a EF25II tube on my 100mm macro I can focus to about 15" even the 180mm only gets me to 4 feet. A thinner tube changes things but again when he talks about shooting bugs, I had in mind things no larger than bees.

I agree, he said all the tubes but not what lens, natural to assume say 50mm to get ~life size.

Even a 300mm lens would be far off infinity focus.

It is true that the older long lenses people often used a tube because the minimum focus distance was quite long anyway.

If the OP posts with the lens and tube length we can work out the focal plane distance at infinity set and max focal length if a zoom.

I guess for wildlife/bird grab shots we are probably talking 10-40ft is the required distance to be useful.

Maybe best to define bug (as opposed to Bug). If its dragonflies you don't need the tubes in the first place so no problem swinging around and snapping the nosey deer. My 100-400II takes decent close ups of butterflies with no tubes and of course a 100 macro will be good without tubes down to wasp sized critters although not so great for a shy deer 50yds away.

If he's taking a photo of a bug with a 400mm f/2.8, well...

Seriously, it's all down to the lens. The longer telephotos let you still work from a further distance, as their MFD is longer to begin with AND some allow focusing well past infinity to begin with!

But, from experience, with any lens I'd be using with tubes to take a photo of a bug, (with the rare exception of a 100-400mm II and dragonflies) I'd likely not be able to focus that far away.

The best answer is in fact that one needs to either do the math, or test, for the specific lens in use as the results will vay WILDLY. Like dozens of yards difference from one lens to another.

I just was playing with the 50mm STM, and tubes, and the effective focus range was reduced to about 12" of leeway. ie: the closest I could focus and furthest I could focus were about 12 inches apart. In that case if the Deer was 3 feet away, it'd be too far to focus.

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #19177733
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If he's taking a photo of a bug with a 400mm f/2.8, well...
.

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I've actually done quite a bit of that. . It's one of the things the 400 f2.8 is pretty good for, given its relatively short MFD combined with how well it takes a 2x extender ..... especially considering the fact that the MFD does not get longer when the extender is added. . Isn't it normal for people who have this lens to shoot insects with it?

Canon 400mm f2.8 w/ 2x extender and 20mm extension tube
Canon 50D, f14, 1/40th of a second, ISO 400

"macro extension tubes all mounted up"

Plural, all.

Not a 20mm tube, not a 36mm tube. Most common tube sets have 36, 20 and 12mm tubes.
So 68mm of tubes.

"fifty yards away"


My original post "Any tube would mean you will probably not get a shot " would be accurate for the majority of lenses but I concede I may have overstated.

However, to the OP's question, who can provide an example of a lens with 68mm of extension tubes being able to focus on a subject fifty yards away?
I think it would be limited to either broken lenses or adapted lenses (or frankendapted).

To provide an imprecise but ball park answer to a fairly common scenario: The EF 300 F4 L IS was really good for tube use while maintaining some reasonable Maximum focus distance. It had high maximum magnification as a bare lens, I often added a 36mm tube which provided a good increase in maximum magnification while still being able to focus at a maximum of around 7 or 8 metres, allowing an average size duck to not fill but mostly fill the frame.

BuckSkin wrote in post #19154341
Let's say I have my macro extension tubes all mounted up and am taking a picture of a bug; I look up and a deer is looking back at me about fifty yards away; I point the camera at the deer and take a couple shots before it disappears.

What effect will the extension tubes have on my deer picture (short tube, medium tube, long tube, or all three) ?

What if the deer were closer, say fifty feet ?

My second sentence mentioned more variables than just "all"

My father-in-law, who can outshoot William Tell and Robin Hood with his eyes closed (admittedly, he probably has much better equipment), has a life-size deer target that looks like a pin cushion that has had a hard life.

If the weather will ever get decent enough to be outside, I may test this at both distances, and with all variables.

My lens arsenal consists of a Sigma 18-250mm HSM Macro (the one with 62mm thread) and a Sigma 50-500mm (the later version), plus two 2x extenders.

I hadn't really thought about trying an extender on the 50-500mm; but, after seeing the grasshopper, I intend to give it a try.