[petrolhead]

Have the Canon 350D

Like to do the odd macro shot but don't want to spend a small fortune on a specific lens

Have seen the following items:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/MACRO-Close-Up...QQcmdZViewItem

and

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Macro-Extensio...QQcmdZViewItem

So which is the one to go for?

Any other suggestions?

I have the follwing lenses:

Happy plastic 18-55 that came with the camers
17-85 IS USM
70-300 IS USM

[petrolhead]

[severnsource]

If that's all you want to spend I'd go for the close up lenses. They don't reduce the effective aperture of the lens and all the lens automation will stilll work. They will probably degrade the image quality slightly, but at the price you don't have much to lose!

The extension tubes won't degrade the image quality, but they do reduce the aperture, for instance a 50mm tube with a 50mm focal length lens will lose you 2 stops, so your F3.5 lens becomes an F7 lens. These tubes are manual only which will make for slightly more difficult exposure control.

The best options would be automatic extension tubes or a macro lens, but I would think they will be more than you want to pay.

Bill

[petrolhead]

I am happy to pay about £70 which I belive will but some jessops extension tubes

This compared to £300 for a macro lense seems the way to go

[ush flynn]

might be able to pick up a used macro lens for not much more than that though mate! Tubes are fine, i used them on my Nikon FE2 a few times, needs a lot of experimenting. On digital you will lose your metering and focus.. pure manual, your advantage is you can see your results almost straight away!

[petrolhead]

The way I see it.

I already have have two excellent lenses. A 17-85 and a 70-300 both IS

I can buy macro tubles that have the contacts so that I can still use the AF and metering. The jesops fits the bill I believe.

If I buy a dedicated lense at the £70 price rance it will probably be a fixed lenth 50mm one meaning that I may end up getting my nose stung if filming a bumble bee or my node bitten of if filming a snake .

The advantage the rings will give me is macro mode but at a safe distance so not spooking the wildlife.

[ush flynn]

well then you could also be looking at bellows. My boss successfully uses his D100 with a set of bellows.

And for best use i think macro tubes and lenses should be used with a 50mm lens anyway