PBase

Hey,

Been chasing dragonflies of late. The 100-400L has proved to be a good lens for it, more useful that 100mm macro anyways. It would be good, though to reduce the 1.8m minimum focus distance.

Anybody had any luck using the 100-400 on extension tubes for insect photography?

Cheers!

http://www.pbase.com/thecellartroll/mini_beasts

I went out this morning with my 100-400 Canon IS, a Bogen 3021 tripod with Bogen 3055 head. I was using a 21 mm ProOptic extension tube, and occasionally a 1.4 teleconverter combined. It works well, though the light fall-off gets to be fairly radical. The image above was not taken with the 1.4 teleconverter, but was taken with the extension tube. There is only minor cropping on this image, what you see is around 80 percent of the actual image. You'll need a good tripod, and the light fall-off will make focusing more difficult, either for you or for the camera.

Thanks for your reply!

Can you tell me what the minimum focus distance was with the 21mm tube?

At a guess I think it was about a meter, but I really don't recall.

Brian

I bit the bullet and got the extension tubes. I am happy to say that they definitely make the 100-400 better for big insect photography!

Hopefully I'll get out earlier tomorrow, but here is an uncropped example.



http://www.pbase.com/thecellartroll/image/117368138


The advantage of this setup is being able to fill the frame but still keep the lens far enough from the insect to avoid scaring it away.