Category Archives: Do It Yourself
D.I.Y Macro Extension Tube
On May 24th 2009 all of my camera equipment was stolen from my car. Thank God for Renter’s Insurance… It covers all assets in your vehicle too! It was a blessing in disguise as I upgraded my camera body and all lenses to the higher grade glass. I had to make some sacrifices though, one of which was my macro extension tube. I recently tried getting a really up close shot of something and couldn’t quite get in as close as I’d liked to with my 50mm macro. I thought that extension tube would be nice, so I went over to Amazon to find a new one. $125, that is an insane amount of money just to get my lens an inch or so away from the body, in essence that is all an extension tube is doing. So I thought about it and here we are, a Do It Yourself Macro Extension Tube.
What you will need:
- Safety Goggles - Safety First, I didn’t use mine and yes I had to run to the bathroom to remove a giant piece of molten plastic. Ironically enough, I am the safety representative at work… I hate when that happens!
- A Dremel Tool
- Some type of Dremel tool cutting bit, almost any will do.
- A Dremel Sanding tool.
- A Rear Lens Cap
- A Body Cap (You can get this combo really cheap on Amazon for Olympus, Nikon, Canon, Sony)
- Super Glue
- JB Weld, or equivalent epoxy
How you will do it:
- Find, buy, or steal from your friend, a Rear Lens Cap and a Body Cap.
- Flip them over to show the reverse side of the caps.
- With your Dremel cutting bit and safety goggles on, carefully trace that inner circle found inside the caps, I have highlighted them in Yellow in the image. You want to maintain the areas that attach to both the Body cap and the rear lens cap. Do not cut off the attachment points.
- After the center holes are removed, carefully sand the inside cuts as they will be very crude. The plastic has a tendency to melt and make awful looking cuts.
- After the two caps are sanded, wash them thoroughly with soap, warm water, and a sponge. This will make sure not plastic debris gets in the body of your camera.
- Once dry, apply a few dots of super glue to each half on the front side of the cap. There should be a little rim left over after your cuts.
- Place the two hollow caps with the front sides facing each other. hold them tightly long enough to allow the super glue to stick. Do not stop here! The super glue is acting as a tacking agent so the halves do not move when you apply the epoxy. If you stop here and try to take a picture, you will almost certainly have horrible pictures due to light leaks in the seam.
- Mix approximately a silver dollar amount of JB Weld and generously apply it around the seam.
- Allow 24 hours to cure.
- Mission Accomplished! Find something to Macro.
NOTE: You will not be able to Auto Focus with this Extension Tube. If you want that luxury spend the $125 on the real extension tube. I prefer to manually focus my Macro shots, this ghetto Extension tube works perfectly for me!
THE RESULTS
A stellar 44.2% increase in macro magnification. I had all of these supplies at home, so I managed to do this at no cost. If you are in the same boat, I highly suggest using this DIY method for a macro extension tube. There are other methods online, but unless you want a Pringles can hanging off of your camera body, this is the way to go!
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Cheap Alternative To Frames
I came up with a pretty cheap and gallery style method of hanging my prints on Saturday. I purchased some metallic prints from Mpix last week and really wanted to hang all 6 of them. I went to my local Michael’s store as I usually do for frames. I just couldn’t pull the trigger on, at a minimum, $120.00 to hang 6 pieces, and that is not including tax! I did end up purchasing frames, one for the piece we bought at the pumpkin festival and another for a print I bought in Alaska 2 years ago…see how much I hate buying frames! There had to be another way, I had thought of hanging them like the old college days with a metal push pin, but then there would forever be a push pin hole in the print. After some brain racking, I came up with a metal clothes line with clothes pins concept, inspired by the metallic nature of the prints. This is great for me, I get sick of looking at my own art very quickly. It is not uncommon for me to give it away once it is complete, especially my paintings, for some reason those look embarrassing after a while.
The Cost:
- 1/16″ Galvenized Steel Wire (122″): $2.50
- 1/16″ Furrel (the thing you make a loop in the wire with): $1.49
- Small bolt link: $.89 Ea. (2 required)
- Screw in Eyelet: $1.49 for 8 (2 required)
- Stainless Steel Clothes Pins from the Container Store: $.50 Ea. (20 Required) It took me a week to find these!
- TOTAL: $17.26
7 Prints hung for under 20 bucks…. That’s what I’m talkin’ about!
How to:
- Screw the eyelet into the wall. I highly recommend using a wall anchor if screwing into dry wall.
- Attach the bolt connector to the Eyelet.
- Repeat for opposite wall.
- Measure the length from one link to the other. Cut your wire approximately 6 inches longer (for the loops)
- Loop your Wire through the first aluminum furrel.
- Clench it in place with pliers (i did it in 3 places with the cable cutting portion of needle nose pliers).
- Attach it to the connector link on the first wall.
- Slide the center portion of the clothes pins onto the opposite end of the wire.
- Route the furrel onto the galvanized wire. Do not clench it yet!
- Place your unclenched furreled loop into the opposite wall’s bolt link.
- Pull wire excess through the furrel until your line is taut.
- Clench the furrel in place and snip the excess cable with cable cutters.
- The whole process took me ~ 12 minutes
How it looks:
The line
The Connection
The circled portion is the clothes line. It is probably pretty obvious, however, I know how distracting my wife's radiant glow can be!
I always shoot 5 images now, it has become a habit. This is a 15 image panorama, the 3 sets of 5 images were processed in Photomatix and the 3 resulting images were photo merged in Photoshop. I also did a panorama of the 3 Key images to show you why HDR is always the best option. The amount of information picked up in the HDR version is much more dynamic, no pun intended. I don’t have a flash for my camera, and with HDR you don’t necessarily need one for indoor photography anymore.
Non-HDR
