200mm macro thing

Itsy Bitsy
(Sony a6000, Auto Chinon 200mm + extension tubes, f8, 1/500s, 200mm, ISO 1600)
also on flickr

200mm is not necessarily the most obvious choice of focal length for macro photography. Why is that? You can probably google the anwser, but isn't it more fun to try?! In theory it sounds really nice to have a macro lens with a long focal length as it allows you to have some distance between you and your subject. Especially useful with bugs and the sorts.

So why does one see so little macro lenses with a focal length larger than about 100mm? It turns out, there's a very good reason for that. Even if the spider picture above is pretty nice.

Definitely not pretty and kind of heavy.

Here's my setup: a €15,- lens (manual 200mm M42 lens), extension tubes and the M42 to E-mount adapter. Pretty unwieldy, right? It is also rather heavy, which should come as no surprise as everything except the camera body is made out of metal. That's a good thing as that will reduce shake as there's no stabilization here. It's also really bad if you shoot more than 3 images.

Turns out it really is a chore to get your subject in focus. The minimum focal distance is normally about 2.7 m with this lens. With extension tubes it is still around 1 meter (that's my guess; I didn't calculate). Normally this isn't a problem, but because we use extension tubes, the depth of field is ludicrously thin (I know this is the case with long lenses). I'm guessing mere centimeters as you can tell from the heather shot below.

Heather in Bloom
(Sony a6000, Auto Chinon 200mm + extension tubes,
f8, 1/1000s, 200mm, ISO 1600)

Also the focusing distance range is really limited too: focus the lens to infinity and your maximum focusing distance is still about 2 meter (another estimate; no maths here today, check out the DOF wiki link if you want equations). Luckily the a6000 has focus peaking, so you can tell what things are in focus or in this case, if anything is focus at all.

Just a Fly
(Sony a6000, Auto Chinon 200mm + extension tubes,
f8, 1/1000s, 200mm, ISO 1600)

This allowed me to take some usable shots; the best being the spider picture all the way at the top of this post, which I think might be one of my best picture to date. Which isn't too shabby for such a cheap setup.

(I really want a proper macro lens now)