Photographer slaps 20 extension tubes on one camera, this is the result

Ever wondered what would happen if you whacked 20 extension tubes on the end of your camera? Well, YouTuber, content creator and all-around enterprising tech guru, @NicolasGrant, has done just that! I was busy scrolling through YouTube Shorts – as you do near the end of the working day – and came across a rather ridiculous-looking thumbnail of a camera, loaded up with more extension tubes than I could count.

I put 20 extension tubes on my camera… - YouTube

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Above: Nicolas Grant's entertaining YouTube video

If you don’t know what an extension tube is, it’s a cheap way of increasing the magnification of a standard lens to macro-level proportions. It does this by sandwiching itself between the camera and lens, thus increasing the distance of the lens’s rear element to the sensor and in turn, increasing the magnification. You can stack extension tubes on top of one another to increase the distance and therefore magnification, but this will create a shallower depth of field and increase the effective aperture, reducing the amount of light that enters the camera. These effects are exacerbated by increasing the number of extension tubes. Typically, extension tubes are sold in sets of three. Suffice to say, 20 is a lot…

Nicolas’ workaround for the severe reduction in light was to use two LED light panels to illuminate the microfiber towel that he was photographing. In the video, he’s hand-holding the camera and while he could have used a tripod off camera, I can’t see how, since the extension-tube stack is so long it sags. As such, I think he did a marvelous job managing to capture a reasonably sharp photo. Sure, the image quality isn’t great, but that’s because he would have had to use a very high ISO, and potentially even increase the exposure in post, in order to produce a usable image.

But what a great video! I love videos like this, because although using 20 extension tubes is never going to be practical, it’s certainly answered a question I’ve had in my mind for years.

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Want to try this out for yourself? Here's how to use extension tubes for low-cost macro photography. But if extension tubes seem too complicated, you could just opt for the best macro lens. And if you want an LED light panel, I recommend the Lume Cube RGB Panel Pro 2.0.