Twelve

New toys... we all love new toys. This week brought 2 my way: a set of extension tubes and a new lens.

I love macro photography - making small things look big. Flowers, bugs and the like. But macro lenses are very expensive so, in order to try it out before I outlay a huge wad of cash I wanted a set of extension tubes to allow me to get closer in to my subjects.

If you've seen any of my flower photographs you may sense a certain affinity (at least I hope you would) that I have for flowers. I've also mananged, in photographing those flowers, to get a bug or three. The tubes have no optics, so I plan on using them with my fast 50mm f/1.8 lens because it's the sharpest lens I own.

Which brings me to my other new toy - the lens. I stumbled across an sBay auction of an old Canon film camera that came equipped with an 18mm f/3.5 Sigma lens. Since my camera has a 1:6 cropped sensor in order to get a nice wide angle I have to go way down on the mm. Even my 50 is morelike 85 on my camera. So for my grand 'hills of home' landscapes I wanted something good and wide. And I still wanted a moderately fast lens. Yeah, f/3.5 ain't that fast, but it'll do for now to experiment. I got the old camera and lens for under $100 so it was a good deal, because the lens has good optics.

Here's to experimentation!