I read that the lens doesn't focus less than 6ft. Has anyone had experience of using extension tubes. If so what are the experiences and results?
839393
Close in focus is a problem with that lens. I have often found that a problem. The minimum focus distance depends on the zoom ratio selected. At the 28mm setting, the camera will focus down in the macro range (marked in orange on the focus distance ring) and that gets you to about 4 feet. The lowest focus distance marked in white is 2 meters, and that applies as the minimum focus distance with the 200 mm zoom setting. In between it varies proportionately to the zoom setting as to what your minimum focus distance is. In short, if you do a lot of work close in, this lens is not a good choice. I have no experience with extension tubes.
1294150
Use the longer mode for most shots. The short focus mode (9 ft or so) seeks like crazy and can be a lot of trouble. The lens operates best at 30ft or so. It is sharp as a tack and fast as hell on focusing. The short range is only good for real closeups. Other than that, leave it in the longer range.
2154912
Yup. Autofocus works with my nex-6. With the extension, the focus range is only a few inches deep. As long as your subject is in that range autofocus would work fine.
374133
No, you can't focus the lens. But you can adjust the distance physically by moving closer or farther away. The lens does swing to the side for cleaning, which is helpful. There is a little piece of metal tubing attached to the side (about 1/4 inch long) that you can attach a hose to - for streaming in a liquid. The on/off switch rotates clockwise, and you can adjust it to allow more or less light to pass through. Hope this helps!
1037487
Twist the lens. It may be that it is indeed too low to get a good focus. If you twist the lens on mine, it comes into focus.
1348836
Use ti increase the magnification.The tube contains no optical elements; its sole purpose is to move the lens farther from the image plane. The farther away the lens is, the closer the focus, the greater the magnification, and also the greater the loss of light requiring a longer exposure time .
1942667
I use this 500 mm lens with a Nikon D600. The range of focus is from about 7 feet to infinity.
1461949
I have the NEX 5 with those lenses, and the extension tubes work perfectly. NEX 6 should be no different.
595082
I can focus down to about 1/2" from the lens with very good clarity. The problem may be your ability to get good lighting on the object. I do not know how small your object is. I used a AAA battery as an object and got good focus. The camera does have a macro function for close shots.I recommend backing off about 6-8 inches and using a little zoom for a close up. Auto focus produced a good image on my camera.
1875333
This is strictly for macro. Focusing on anything that isn't at the closest focal point is impossible. It is also recommended that you use a lens with a shorter zoom level. This is basically incompatible with my 250mm. I can only imagine how much worse it is with a 400mm.
1376225
The lens has only electric drive for the focusing. You can use it only when it is powered by the body. I have a very simple extension tubes without any electrical connection and when I attaching this lens manual focus is not working
701819
Use extension tubes with a prime lens. Not so good with zooms. Best lenses are those with MANUAL f-stop rings, otherwise you can only shoot with the smallest aperture. You can indeed get way closer and shots will be very sharp.
797772
According to the Panasonic lens chart for the 14-45 lens, the minimum focus distance is 1 foot or 12 inches. I haven't tested the G1 in the more traditional macro/close-up type approach. I didn't get the impression that the camera likes getting closer than 12". From @2-3', I was able to engage the Extended Zoom (2x) + 4x digital + a Tcon 1.7 teleconverter (1200mm) and got surprisingly good results. I'm not suggesting you do it, but it worked.
278853
Hi, thanks question.Extension is not required for this lens. Will not in focus.Thanks in advance.
14471
The tube will not focus automatically. Since it is set up for fine photography, I use a tripod to keep it steady. A minor motion is all you need to focus. Remember if the surface is not even valleys will be in focus while higher points will not.
549378
Yes, just did mine last night. The focus was off 12mm !!! The lens was working fine on my old 350d, totally shocked.
1960708
While Doug James answered this correctly, I did look up this lens on Canon Lenses. Normally, this is an f4 to 5.6 lens and is an EFS lens for C size cameras. For extenders the widest f-stop that is acceptable is f 5.6. So when you are at f 4.0 you might be able to use this but it would be very limited. You might want to try Canon extension tubes for magnification. The 25mm seems to do best with this lens. Remember though that infinity focusing is generally lost with extension tubes.