Needing some advice on what I need for macro shots.....

I have a Nikon D850 and a AF-S Micro Nikkor 105 mm 2.8 G ED

Back in the film days I used a extender to get close up shots. Since moving to digital,many years ago,  I haven't played around that type of photography. I would like to change that. What would I need to be able to focus up close on nature subjects? I was thinking I'd need an extender again.

I see they come in different lengths. I'm assuming that the longer ones focus up closer?

If you would recommend an extender, would I be better off with the one from Nikon, or a third party extender? Something like these?

https://www.adorama.com/knaetsdnkaf.html

https://www.adorama.com/l/Photography/Lens-Accessories/Nikon~Extension-Tubes

Thanks for any advice given!

keiththom wrote:

I have a Nikon D850 and a AF-S Micro Nikkor 105 mm 2.8 G ED

Back in the film days I used a extender to get close up shots. Since moving to digital,many years ago, I haven't played around that type of photography. I would like to change that. What would I need to be able to focus up close on nature subjects? I was thinking I'd need an extender again.

I see they come in different lengths. I'm assuming that the longer ones focus up closer?

If you would recommend an extender, would I be better off with the one from Nikon, or a third party extender? Something like these?

https://www.adorama.com/knaetsdnkaf.html

https://www.adorama.com/l/Photography/Lens-Accessories/Nikon~Extension-Tubes

Thanks for any advice given!

You would be better with the Kenko set. It has contacts so that your camera can focus, read the aperture and control it properly. It will also autofocus (although not particularly well). Get the full set of three: the 36mm is good by itself and lets you operate in the 0.4x to 1.5x range (approximately) and the stack of 12, 20, and 36mm can get you up to the 2x range (the 105mm is a variable focal length lens, and its focal length is close to the 68mm of the combined stack of 3 Kenko tubes, which is how you get to 2x magnification).

The Nikon tubes, while sturdy, have no electrical connection so you're stuck without aperture control on a G lens.

A Raynox 250r macro lens would also work well with the 105 G. I've used it on mine a few times--less fiddly than extension tubes (sometimes using all three tubes makes the 105 dangle off the end more than I like). If you don't want that much magnification, the Raynox 150 should work too.

You can do 1:1 macro with that setup without any accessories.

With internal focus, i.e. modern lenses, the result of using extension tubes can be not great, as the spacing of the fixed rear elements to the sensor is more critical.  Same is true for rear doublers not engineered to work with a specific lens.

Older design helicoid macro lenses are essentially a fixed conjugate on a variable extension tube - so additional extension is usually OK.  However the length of the tube gets to be rediculous.   Either way, this is where front dipoters ( like the Raynox series ) help.

If you are interested in doing studio / bench work, and can deal with longer exposures, you can construct a very nice 4x close focus lens with a flatbed scanner lens and a cheap helicoid extension tube.  Its basically $0 and the results can be amazing.   They were engineered to do 4x on a digital sensors.

Anyway, I think you have a fine starting point, and you have some cropping latitude.   If you find yourself wanting higher magnification, add dipoters.  For 4x or above, fixed conjugates some of which can be free from the dumpster.

FiggeB wrote:

Check macrophotography.net.

I believe you mean https://photomacrography.net/

They have a forum with tips for beginners. Everything about extension tubes, macro lenses, reversed lenses, stacking lenses, macro rails, working distances, focus stacking, etc.. Also closeup filters which are available in achrochromatic versions. Much better than cheap single lens filters which are to be avoided. I have dedicated macro lenses but also use a 77 mm Canon 500d with my 70-200/2.8. Nice combination. Nisi have similar filters which are reported to be good. Nikon filters are good, but I do not know if they are still available.

I'm pretty sure Canon 500Ds aren't available either, these days.

The currently available 77mm achromats are Marumi and (as you mentioned) NiSi. I have a Marumi: quite pleased with its quality.

If I remember correctly, most of them were only available in 52 mm.

Nikon achromats were available in 52mm and 62mm. This is usually fine even for larger lenses, because you're almost never going to shoot wide open, so you can get by with a step-up ring.

Note that you can't do this with the Sigma 52mm achromat, because it's only about 35mm in diameter, mounted in what is essentially a permanent 52mm step-up.

I no longer use extension tubes. They are mostly of bad quality in my opinion, are fiddly to use and you loose a lot of light.

You don't really lose any light: that's a common myth.

Remember, macro is almost always done at apertures near the diffraction limit, and what matters at such apertures is physical aperture size and magnification. If you have a 20mm physical aperture and you're shooting at an effective f8 to keep from losing resolution to diffraction, it really doesn't matter if you get there by extending a 60mm f/2.8 until you're at 2x, or if you've put a strong achromat like the Raynox DCR-250in front of a 100mm to get close to 2x, you''re still going to have to shoot at an effective f8, unless you're stacking. That changes the game and you may want a larger physical aperture. My Zeiss 100mm f/2 has a 50mm aperture, which is huge, and if I were stacking at 2x (yes, with 150mm of tubes) I might shoot it wide open at an effective f6 to keep the resolution up. If I were shooting without stacking, I'd drop it down a stop.

FiggeB wrote:

I might be mistaken, but I suspect that the the Nikon PK12 lacks any kind of electrical contacts. The only ”automatic” in the PK12 is a mechanical aperture coupling? A very old Nikon design? Will it work with G lenses? Check the Q&A in the link you refer to.

I checked my collection of old Nikon gear, reversing rings, conversion rings etc, but could not find any PK12.

They're relatively rare. PK-12 is a "closeup adapter" for the Nikon short telephotos. It's only 14mm, and if memory serves that's the focus throw of the original 85mm f1.4, so it picks up where that lens's own helicoid lets off.

I've been known to use the shorter Kenko tube (I believe 12mm) and 77mm Canon 500D with my 85mm f/1.4, That gets you into a really nice range for shallow DOF butterflies and flowers (if you know how to stalk butterflies in the cool morning where they're slow).

I used to frequently use a predecessor of the PK-12, the Nikon E6 (no dash) to boost the camera a few extra mm from the rear standard of the PB-4 bellows. Otherwise, you couldn't use the rotating rear standard with a Nikon D3 (or D2X).

By far the most common Nikon extension tube was the PK-13, the 26.5mm tube that was a "match" for the various 55mm Micro-Nikkors. Those had 26.5mm helicoids that got them to 1:2, so the 26.5mm tube took you to 1:1.

The only problem was that when Nikon went from the f/3.5 design to the f/2.8, they added their first floating group for a macro, which meant that the optical design of the lens would be "wrong" at extended distances. Fortunately, the effect wasn't that strong. It just meant that you basically couldn't count on the 55mm f/2.8's flat field and near zero distortion beyond 1:2, so no copy work. Still a dang fine lens for flowers, bugs, and watches.

In my young and stupid days, I dismantled a 55mm f/2.8, added a helicoid between the two groups and a near round "iris" (I think a 13 blade) and made a superb bellows lens. I should do that again: I have a 55mm f/2.8 with a frozen focusing helicoid, and the CLA is actually a worse procedure than my recreation.

As stated by BobORama, some lenses due to their optical design do not play well with extension tubes.

Yep. Oddly enough, it was common for one of those lenses (the 55mm f2.8 I mentioned earlier) to be bundled with one. Thanks, Nikon.

If you want to go beyond 1:1 it it probably better to use corrected closeup filters.

Almost never.

Remember the first rule: stronger lens dominates the system.

Even a good achromat is just a two or three element lens. If you let it dominate, you lose all the compensations and corrections of a more complex lens. For example, a 70-200mm lens is 5 diopters at the long end (1000mm/200mm). If you put a good 5 diopter closeup lens on one (say a Marumi DHG 200) you've made a 1:1 macro (5D + 5D = 10D. 1000mm/10D = 100mm, at 200mm infinity focus it's 1:1) but you've also made a Frankenstein monster where a simple 2-element lens is contributing equally to the whole system.

There's a reason Nikon only made their achromat closeup lenses in 1.5D and 2.9D and Canon only made theirs in 2D and 4D.  No one really wants beautiful, sophisticated lenses dominated by strong two-element "magnifying glasses".

Even the aftermarket doesn't go beyond 5D (Marumi and NiSi) and 8D (Raynox). Raynox only goes that high because their closeup lenses are designed for the shorter lenses on P&S cameras and a 8D can't dominate when your "telephoto" setting is still 20D.

The ultimate closeup filter is of course a proper lens.

You mean like a Laowa 2:1 or 2x-5x, or a Leitz Photar, Zeiss Luminar, Macro (not "Micro") Nikkor, or a reversed enlarger lens, of course. Something actually designed for high magnification. A 50mm f2.8 Leitz Photar on a Nikon PB-4 bellows is generally my weapon of choice.

Or a reversed micro-Nikkor on a bellows.

Or, the current darling of the low-cost, high-quality macro field, a reversed, finite microscope objective, like the AmScope 4x plan achro with a 160mm tube length or the Nikon CF plan achro (or was it Apo?) at a 210mm tube length.

This leads to use of stacked lenses, which is a subject in itself.

Indeed, and one I'm not quite sure you understand, if you're talking about a stacked lens as "the ultimate closeup lens". Although that may be more an issue of "terminology" than "knowledge".

Remember that rule "stronger lens dominates". When you stack lenses, the front lens (the "objective lens", in current microscopy parlance) has near total domination of the image quality. The rear lens (the "relay lens" or "tube lens" in current microscope parlance) is just sort of "along for the ride. It has one simple job, grab an image projected at infinity and focus it on a sensor typically 100mm (10D) to 200mm (5D) away, with 200mm being the most common "tube lens", by far, because microscopes).

The front lens has the harder job: to grab a subject at roughly 5mm to 40mm from the front element and turn it into an ray bundle focused at infinity. The front lenses are typically something in the 50mm (20D) to 20mm (50D) range for a reversed prime, or 50mm (20D), 40mm (25D), 20mm (50D), 10mm (100D) for 4x, 5x, 10x, and 20x "infinity" microscope objectives, respectively.

Since the front lens is so much stronger than the rear lens, it's the dominant lens, and you can get by with a very simple rear lens, a three or four element achromat. You can actually buy a compact, inexpensive tube lens of exceptional quality like the four-element Carman Haas Laser "clone" of the venerable ITL200 (a lens built for Thor Labs by Nikon's industrial division) for around $180. The Raynox DCR-150, a high quality 3-element lens marketed as a "closeup lens" for $70 turns out to be more useful in the rear as a "tube lens" than it is up front.

These days, "the ultimate" is a Mitutoyo 5x "infinity" objective (around $600 used on the bay) and an ITL200 (around $400 for the Thor Labs original, $180 for the Carman Hass knockoff.

BobORama wrote:

You can do 1:1 macro with that setup without any accessories.

With internal focus, i.e. modern lenses, the result of using extension tubes can be not great, as the spacing of the fixed rear elements to the sensor is more critical. Same is true for rear doublers not engineered to work with a specific lens.

Older design helicoid macro lenses are essentially a fixed conjugate on a variable extension tube - so additional extension is usually OK.

How old is an "older design"? I have one of the Nikon 55mm f/2.8 Ai-S Micro Nikkors that has a floating rear group. That design was introduced in 79. Many years ago, I took a physically damaged on, separated it into two optical capsules, mounted one in a short helicoid, put an iris between the two groups, and the whole thing in a short tube for use on a bellows. The helicoid had 4x the range of Nikon's original setup, and set the compensation from infinity to about 2x in forward mode, or 0.5x to maybe 6x in reverse mode.

(Speaking of "how old is older?", Wow! You're still alive! Hadn't seen you post in a while, and feared the worst. There aren't that many of us old geezers left).

However the length of the tube gets to be rediculous. Either way, this is where front dipoters ( like the Raynox series ) help.

Nah. The Raynox are far more useful behind a lens than in front of it. Seriously.

If you are interested in doing studio / bench work, and can deal with longer exposures, you can construct a very nice 4x close focus lens with a flatbed scanner lens and a cheap helicoid extension tube. Its basically $0 and the results can be amazing. They were engineered to do 4x on a digital sensors.

Or a 4x AmScope Plan Achro objective. They're around $29, and what all the cool kids are using these days.

Anyway, I think you have a fine starting point, and you have some cropping latitude. If you find yourself wanting higher magnification, add dipoters. For 4x or above, fixed conjugates some of which can be free from the dumpster.

Tell me about it. My current 50mm f/2.8 EL-Nikkor came off an enlarger I spotted on the curb one day about 15 years ago. Fine lens at 2-5x on a bellows.