Difference between teleconverter and extention tubes?
Teleconverters are for telephoto shots.
Extension tubes are for macro shots.
And do they ever work well! The beauty of extension tubes is they have no glass so the quality of your images remains good even when you stack on a bunch. EXTREMELY close macros are possible....
shot these on a 70mm lens with extension tubes added -
Hairy orbweb spider with 13mm extension tube:
The same spider with 21mm tube:
The water drop on this leaf was less than the size of a pinhead. with 31mm tube:
Same drop with all three tubes stacked. Total of 65mm!
Be aware, when shooting with tubes, the same rules apply with telephoto: the more the magnification, the shallower depth of field becomes, and shakeyness becomes more pronounced. It took 20 shots proped up against a building to be still enough for a sharp shot of the closest water drop. Also, if you're using tubes on a modern lens that has no aperature ring, the tubes must have electrical contacts so you can set your f-stop. Otherwise, your lens shoots wide aperature every time and you'll end up with DOF so shallow, it's unusable in most instances.
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