I purchased a new lens

Hey, how’s it going? I’m Andy Jones from 50mmframework.com and this is episode 57 of the Photography Q&A podcast.

Later in the podcast, I have some photography news, but first…

I purchased a new lens

If you listened to the episode 2 weeks ago on macro photography, you’ll know I have a new direction for my photography.

I started off with a set of 3 extension tubes that are 13, 21, and 31mm in length. Putting any combination of the tubes between my 50mm 1.4 lens and the body gives varying magnifications.

The problem

The tubes I bought cost around $30 CND and are very lightweight plastic. If I knew then what I know now I would have spent more and got a brand I recognized.

The main problem was that they flexed and even though they were locked in place they could be turned a few degrees either way. Both of these things caused the camera to give error messages. I had to be super careful handling the setup.

After a week of the errors locking my camera up and at one point having to remove the battery to reset everything, the camera started developing problems. I use Custom Function settings (C.Fn) to set different parameters for my camera. Like changing the lowest ISO setting to 50, instead of 100, or setting the number of autofocus points to use. All of the custom function settings didn’t work as they had been set and I couldn’t change any of them. Luckily I was able to build a new group of settings, but I didn’t put the extension tubes on again.

My Options

Once I had fixed the custom settings on my 13-year-old Canon 1D mk4, I had a decision to make. Do I buy a better set of extension tubes, a new lens, or stop shooting macro? 

There was no way I was going to stop shooting macro, so it was down to extension tubes or a new lens. New extension tubes that I hoped would work properly were going to cost $150 CDN. I could get a cheaper 1x magnification macro lens for $250 ish or buy a 2x for $499.

The Lens

I decided to get the Laowa 100mm f/2.8 2x macro for $499 from B&H in New York. It’s a manual focus lens which is fine for macro, and for the Canon EF model you can change the aperture in camera. 

I’ve had it for a little over 2 days and the photos I’m getting are incredible. One thing that makes shooting macro harder is weight. The lens is well made and isn’t light, but my camera body is by far the heaviest piece of kit. So I’m hoping I can use one of my daughter's Canon 60D bodies. The 60D has an APC-S sensor which will allow the subject to fill more of the frame. My 1D sensor is an APS-H which is halfway between the APS-C and Full Frame sensor. The 60D is also half the weight and size of my 1D with the bonus flip-out LCD screen so I won’t have to lie on the ground anymore.

The images I’m getting with this lens are so detailed. You can clearly see the insect's eyes and hairs on their bodies, plants and flowers are totally different from what is seen with the naked eye.

The only problem I have to deal with is the depth of field, it’s just a slither. There is no use checking the Photopills app for macro DoF. What I need to do is master the fine art of photo stacking. That’s merging together multiple images with different focus points to get an image with a deeper depth of field. I’ll report back on that adventure.

Ok, so that is the update on my macro situation. Next, I have some news.
This is from an article on the Digital Camera World website. Thanks to Paul Paldus for sending me over to this article.

The headline says, 

Now, these figures are from the United States, not worldwide. The big problem at the moment with mirrorless cameras is the supply of components. So when all the people that are buying their first camera turn up at the store they are buying what is available to them. Seasoned photographers will wait for the mirrorless body they want. So I don’t see this as DSLRs making a comeback, it’s more of mirrorless cameras not being available and DSLRs being heavily discounted and readily available.

Great headline, it got my attention.

That’s it for this episode. Follow my Instagram channel to see my daily photos, there is a link in the show notes. There are going to be lots of macro photos.

Ok, I’ll talk to you next week, have a good one, bye.