Published December 14, 2025 · by Gary Rutherford
I love a true 1:1 macro lens. I own three. I would not buy one as your first lens for macro work, and here's why.
For about forty dollars you can buy a set of three extension tubes that fit between your camera body and any lens you already own. Slide them on, and your existing 50mm or 35mm prime suddenly focuses absurdly close. The image quality is better than people expect. The constraint — no autofocus, very thin depth of field, manual aperture rings on some setups — is, for a beginner, an asset. You learn to slow down.
We hand the tubes out on day one of Macro & Nature. By week three, half the class has decided they love macro enough to invest in a real macro lens. The other half has learned what they need to know and goes back to other genres without having spent twelve hundred dollars.
That's the test I apply to most expensive gear recommendations: is there a forty-dollar version that teaches you whether you'll use the expensive one? For macro, there is.