We had a glorious late summer day here in Norfolk today, sandwiched between rain yesterday and more to come tomorrow . There are still a fair number of butterflies and dragonflies around for now....
Thank you all for commenting. With the 300mm F4 without tubes the MFD is about 1.5m I would guess, with a 36mm tube (not 25mm as I said in the original post) it comes down to about 1m, and the max range is then about 3.5m. I find it a versatile lens for bigger things like butterflies and dragonflies, and it takes the Sigma ringflash with a 77mm thread adaptor ring. The Red Admiral and the dragonfly were both in the middle of an inaccessible bramble patch and it was the only way to reach them
adrianr wrote:
Male Common Darter on Fly Agaric mushroom
An exceptional perch for a dragonfly, in that fly agarics tend to mostly be out of direct sunlight and that dragonflies don't tend to rest near ground level.
adrianr wrote:
All with EOS 7D and 300mm F4 L IS lens and 25mm extension tube, except for the Darter on the mushroom, which was with the 100mm.
Your results are encouraging. I very recently obtained the extremely rare Tamron SP 400mm f4 lens * for MF film use with my OM system. Having prevously tried placing a 30mm extension behing my 300mm f2.8 for shooting dragonflies, etc, possibly across narrow bodies of water, I found (calibration) that the 400 would, with 100mm extension, give a field ca 80mm wide at the closest working distance of about 2m from the film plane. (40mm extension gives about a 50% wider field at the same working distance). With some Provia 400X film stock I am now ready when the circumstances present themselves.
. There are still a fair number of butterflies and dragonflies around for now....