Bronica S-36 Extension Tube Review
My favourite photo I have taken so far with the S-36 extension tube. The contrast of red and green really makes the subject pop. 1/30s 150mm F5.6 S-36 Extension Tube Portra 160.
Crop factor is something that is brought up a lot in photography as crop bodies, either APS-C or M4/3 are becoming increasingly popular. However, whilst they give a narrower field of view than full frame (35mm) you have the opposite problem with Medium Format. My Bronica S 80mm F2.8 lens is equivalent to 45mm on a 35mm camera and my S 150mm F3.5 lens is equivalent to 85mm. The difficulty is that as the physics stay the same you still have similar minimum focusing distances to 35mm which make it difficult to get close to your subject. There are two macro lens options: The S 110mm F4 and the much rarer and more expensive PS 110mm 4.5 (which was the only lens that could do true 1:1). With both lenses being difficult to find in the UK I decided to invest in a cheaper and more readily available option – an extension tube.
The S-36 extension is quite a bit larger than the ones you would find for 35mm cameras to fit the larger format.
For those who are unfamiliar with extension tubes, they attach in between a lens and the camera body and reduce the minimum focusing distance between the lens and the subject to fill the frame. You will have a shallower depth of field and you lose the ability to focus to infinity, but the latter is irrelevant given the purpose of what extension tubes are used for. There are two available for the Bronica SQ system – the smaller S-18 and the larger S-36. The larger the extension tube the closer you can focus and what is handy is that you can combine the two to get closer still. I couldn’t find an S-18 so I bought an S-36 on its own.
Take note of the two pins lined up with the green dots. If these are not in place you may have a frustrating time detaching it from a lens or attaching it to a camera body. If out of alignment they can be simply pushed into position.
First impressions when using it were that is could be quite fiddly to get on and off the camera and lens. When I tried to detach it from a lens the lever just wouldn’t budge, turns out there’s a knack to it – you need to make sure the two pins are lined up with the green dot on the back when it is not attached to the camera body (as you can see in the photo above). This is the same for when you attach is to the camera body as well. The minimum focusing distance was now something like half what it was before for both lenses so you could get a lot closer but whilst the focusing range is still reasonable it does take a bit of shuffling back and forth to get into position. The focusing screen worked ok when paired with the 80mm F2.8 lens but struggled a bit more with the 150mm F3.5. For the latter, the bottom of the central circle was very dark at almost all angles you looked at it, which made it difficult to see when it was aligned. With a bit of practice though it was possible to easily and consistently get focus.
A comparison of the S 80mm F2.8 lens at its minimum focusing distance with and without the S-36 extension tube to compare the level of magnification.
Left: 1/250s F5.6 80mm |Right: 1/125s F5.6 80mm S-36 Extension Tube Portra 800.
A comparison of the S 150mm F3.5 lens at its minimum focusing distance with and without the S-36 extension tube to compare the level of magnification.
Left: 1/250s F5.6 150mm |Right: 1/125s F5.6 150mm S-36 Extension Tube Portra 800.
My preference was to use the 150mm lens with the S-36 because it allowed you to still stay a reasonable distance away from the subject, whereas with the 80mm lens you were right up next to it. There’s a good-sized gap between what the S-36 is capable of and what the bare lens is, so I would definitely be interested in picking up an S-18 when one becomes available.
A comparison in magnification between using the 80mm and 150mm lenses with the S-36. Notice the increased barrel distortion for the image on the right shot with the 80mm lens. These were shot wide open to illustrate the maximum amount of bokeh.
Left: 1/8s F3.5 150mm |Right: 1/8s F2.8 80mm S-36 Extension Tube Portra 160.
Looking at the photos the extension tube is definitely allowing me to get into these close-up shots I just couldn’t get before, but it wasn’t behaving exactly as I expected. In theory this extension tube requires between 2/3 – 1 stop of extra light to compensate, however I didn’t find this at all with what I shot. When looking at negatives side by side that had been shot with and without the one stop of compensation, they looked exactly the same. You can see a comparison of negatives below, Let me know if you can see a difference and which one you think is which.
A comparison of two negatives taken one stop apart. Can you see a noticeable difference between the two? One of them was shot at 1/250s and the other at 1/125s.
The second frustration was the poor quality of Bokeh in some images. Unfortunately, the Bronica lenses only have five aperture blades which creates jagged, pentagon shapes when heavily stopped down to F16 (I am unsure if this is the case for the newer PS lenses). Coupled with the extension tube which means you can’t get everything in focus even at F22, and you can end up with messy, busy looking images. The shots that faired a lot better where the ones at F5.6 or below as it all looked a lot smoother, with enough completely out of focus to draw the viewers eye to the right place.
Cherry blossom - a sure sign of spring. Stopped down to F16 still yields a lot of Bokeh (relatively). However it isn’t very high in quality and makes the image look very busy, with the point of interest for the viewers eye not immediately obvious. 1/125s 150mm F16 S-36 Extension Tube Portra 800.
In comparison this image shot at F2.8 has much smoother Bokeh which draws the viewers eye to the subject. 1/125s 80mm F2.8 S-36 Extension Tube Portra 160.
Finally, I did have some issues with scanning images where the first time around they had a huge lack of colour and contrast despite being scanned with the same settings as the shots that didn’t use the S-36. It’s hard to tell if this was just a coincidence or not and it was more pronounced on some shots than others so this will require more investigation to see if it is an issue with the extension tube.
My original scan of one of the comparison images above. This was the worst example for images taken with the S-36 that lacked colour and contrast. Rescanning produced better results but it still look different to the shots taken without the extension tube.
Overall, I did enjoy shooting with it as it meant I was able to cheaply get a lot more out of my two lenses. However, I would really like to get my hands on an S-18 as I think having a weaker effect will actually make it more useful in a lot of situations. The S-36 gets you in a lot closer but often this will probably be too much especially if you want to do something like tight headshots (which you wouldn’t be able to do with the bare lenses). If working outside I definitely recommend using at least 400 ISO film because you will need faster shutter speeds to freeze the action of moving objects in the wind, though inside you can happily use 100 ISO film for minimal grain. I will have to do further testing on how much exposure is required but it is important to remember that colour negative film has a much wider exposure latitude than digital which is why I may have gotten some surprising results. It does give me a bit of pause for thought on slide film though, so perhaps I will need to bracket on the first couple of rolls.
When using the S-36 be mindful of shooting small object with a lot of depth because you will struggle to get everything in focus. 4s 80mm F16 S-36 Extension Tube Portra 160.
Subjects with less depth are handled much more easily. 1s 80mm F16 S-36 Extension Tube Portra 160.
What do you think? Do you use extension tubes, or would you always use a dedicated macro lens? I know I am keen to find a PS 110m F4.5 macro lens but I won’t hold my breath for when one becomes available (at a reasonable price) in the UK. A macro lens would certainly be much easier to use as you won’t have so many limits on focusing and depth of field, just so long as you can find one.
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