Canon 50mm F/1.8

[kshotton45]

Canon 50mm F/1.8 MK II .
Is this lens OK for Macro, if I use 68mm of tubes?


They're about £55 new. This seems a decent price to get started with. Has anyone used one?

Keith.

[Interpreter]

Yes, I have one of these which does the job which it is intended to do. Mine is the EF 50mm ll. It is the cheapest of the three Canon 50mm lenses and also the most fragile. A good knock and I have heard that the front element will be ejected from the front of the lens barrel where it is held in place by three plastic lugs. By a good knock I mean catching it on the car door whilst alighting etc.
I have not damaged this lens in any way and it travels with me in my camera bag and is used as a back up/cover lens on a spare body, although I have used it on the 5D and 350D. I have not used it with extension tubes. I have no complaints about the resolution and it does not appear to suffer from lens abberations. It is an inexpensive way to expand your outfit.

[HowlinWolf]

The 50mm f/1.8 lens (from any manufacturer) is a much maligned, versatile optic. It's fast, and gives very sharp images from f/4 up. Adding 50mm of extension tubes will give a 1:1 reproduction ratio, and it's a steal at the price these things cost. If used on a digital SLR, the crop factor will turn the lens into a wide aperture portrait lens.

The 50mm will not have the performance of a true macro lens, but with the extension tubes it will enable you to get in close for little money.

HW

[kshotton45]

Thanks for the advice.
The position to date is that I now have a set of Kenko tubes. Before I buy a 50mm lens I intended to have a go with the kit lens. The tubes duly arrived but they only fit an EF lens and the kit lens is an EF-S lens.
As my kit lens is only a paperweight I decided to machine the front protruding bit off. This has worked OK and I now have a kit lens and a set of tubes!
Tomorrow I'll try it out in the garden.

Keith.

[Interpreter]

I have been browsing the internet looking for bellows extensions for use with EOS cameras and most of the one which I have found cost in the region of $700 in America. Using the normal exchange system that will be £700 in England. One dealer, however, has a very similar item for sale for $29! It looks everybit as good as the more costly ones. Another extension, whilst classed as a bellows was a sort of bag which attached to the camera at one end and a lens could be attachet to the other. There were no rails with it and so unless the bag is very stiff, I cannot see how it would be used. When folded it looked like a flat piece of rubber with mounts on either side. If anyone can rescue the fittings from a duff lens and camera, I should think that something similar could be knocked up easily enough.

[kshotton45]

Wow! Don't you have to get up close and personal with this Macro photography!
I now need to get some light to the subject. I have an external flash unit. Does anyone have any experience with either, wireless remote units, or an extension lead, to allow me to move the flash unit off the camera?

Keith.

[Interpreter]

Originally Posted by kshotton45

Wow! Don't you have to get up close and personal with this Macro photography!
I now need to get some light to the subject. I have an external flash unit. Does anyone have any experience with either, wireless remote units, or an extension lead, to allow me to move the flash unit off the camera?

Keith.

A ring light would be best. It gives very even illumination. In my Contax days I had a number of remotes for flash units. They looked like small black plastic cubes. They picked up the light from the main flash and fired the unit to which they were attached. They were inexpensive, but I have not seen any for some time.