DSLRUsers.com

Thanks to Poon, and my kids, I now have a set of Kenko macro tubes.

Went out this afternoon (to the backyard) and had a play. These were taken with the 18-135mm Kit lense and 20mm tube.

Plum Blossum


New Apricot Shoot (probably 5-10mm long)


Blue Spring Star (probably 10-15mm wide)


Appreciate any comments or things to look out for next time.

Hi Russell,
welcome to macro !
I like the stamen detail in #1, the shadows work well and you have the white working beautifully against the blue background. #2 appears to be sharp-as, I would be inclined to crop in tight and highlight the details within the bud and loose the background completely.
#3 while a nice shaped subject and good background looks like the sharp focus point is on the leaf bottom right - try again with sharp focus on the center stamen, and perhaps a spray of water.
Have fun
Deb T

Thanks Deb.

I will try a crop on the Apricot shot...

My wife printed the blue flower @ 6x8. Can see in the print that it is a bit soft / OOF in the middle. Will have another go later. Thanks for the comments

Macro is a great end of things photographic Russell.
Your little blue flower is Iphion uniflora or blue spring star.
Sometimes manual focus is best so that you can get the sharp portion of the photo where you want it.
Have fun with it,
Regards Colin

Colin_12,
thanks for the encouragement and name of the flower.

I was using manual focus, as the autofocus on my 8 month old 18-135 kit lense has stopped working Not Happy, Jan!. I will be taking the lense into to get fixed soon. All I can think of was that a slight breeze blew and moved the centre out of focus.

Russell,

Double-check this, but auto-focus on your 18-135 may not be working because of the Kenko tubes. From my brief investigation in extension tubes, I read that AFS lenses do not auto-focus with Kenko tubes.

Ben

That happens a lot when you are out doing feild work.
I try to utilise the flash and a high shutter speed to make the flower "stop"
I have been able to use 500th of a second on my d70s.
It does not always work or give the effect you want but it may be worth a try.
Regards Colin

Thanks Vodka, but the lense stopped autofocussing before the tubes arrived .

My wife picked up the camera and tried to take photos in Automatic mode, of the cat playing. No Autofocus means that the camera would not even take a photo (in this mode).

My other lenses work ok, so figure that it is this lense. I did see a few other cases on the internet of this problem with this lense ...