What’s Old Is New Again

Flower after Rain, photo by Harold Davis. View this photo larger.

I have a new “gizmo,” purchased on eBay. Except that this small piece of photographic hardware isn’t really new. It’s used, discontinued by Nikon the manufacturer.

I won’t leave you guessing. The “gizmo” is a Nikon PN-11 extension tube. The great virtue of this extension tube, 55mm in length, is that it provides a tripod socket on a collar.

An important point in extreme field macros like the ones shown in this story, where the combination of a macro lens and extension tubes becomes very unbalanced. Mounting the assembly on the tripod at one of the extension tubes (rather than at the camera) helps provide a stable macro platform.

The downside of this extension tube is that I lose all automation. Well, the camera does still stop down the diaphragm. But I have to manually measure light and choose an exposure. Interestingly, my old spot light meter works just fine. Choosing the aperture with these kinds of photos is kind of a non-issue: I want to be as far stopped down as I can. So all losing the automation really means is that I have to set the shutter speed myself with the camera on manual. Thanks to instant LCD viewing, I can see whether my exposure was close enough, and correct things if there’s a problem.

Forthwith, one photo of a Lobelia bud, and two of Alyssum buds. If you know how small these flowers actually are, you’ll get some idea of how close I was thanks to my new (but old) tripod-mounting extension tube.