Ask Jason
What are the pros and cons of closeup filters compared to extension tubes? Find out this and a whole lot more
Our resident Nikon expert Jason Parnell-Brookes answers your questions and solves your problems. If you’d like Jason to come to the rescue regarding your Nikon-related question, email it to
mail@nphotomag.com. Please note that we reserve the right to edit queries for clarity or brevity.
What are the pros and cons of close-up filters compared with extension tubes, for shooting macro photos on a budget? Bruce Brian, via email
Jason says… Close-up filters are often sold as a set, containing three or four filters of different strengths. Beware of cheap kits for around £20/$25, which are likely to have poor optical quality. Individual filters like the Hoya HMC Close-up +4 tend to be a safer bet, costing from around £40/$40. Extension tubes have no glass in them, and simply space a regular lens further away from the camera, reducing its minimum focus distance. Sets like the Kenko Teleplus Auto Extension Tube Set for Nikon (£120/$125) contain tubes of different lengths for varying magnification factors, along with the required electronic and mechanical coupling between the camera body and the lens.
The image quality of the lens shouldn’t be impaired by extension tubes, but the magnification effect is diminished at longer focal lengths, making them a poor choice for use with telephoto lenses.
The print head in my printer keeps getting blocked. What would you recommend for highquality, reliable A4 photo and document printing? Mike Gerrard, via email
Jason says… I’d go for a Canon PIXMA iP7250 printer (£40/$70). It uses both pigment-based and dyebased black inks, making it highly effective for both documents and photos. Print speeds are fast, and colour photo quality is superb. Reliability is excellent and running costs are affordable, especially if you use Canon’s high-yield XL cartridges.
If you’d prefer an all-in‑one printer with photocopying, the PIXMA TS6050 (TS6020 in the US) adds a built-in scanner and costs £80/$90. A further upgrade to the TS8050 (TS8020 in the US) at £130/$140 enables direct printing from SD/SDHC memory cards; it has an additional dye-based grey ink, for enhanced black-andwhite photo printing fidelity. All of these printers have built-in Wi-Fi.
Jason says… The 1855mm VR lens supplied with the D3400 is small and light, but its maximum aperture of f/5.6 at the long end of the zoom range is fairly narrow. So you’ll struggle to get a tight depth of field in portraiture.
Depth of field is a measure of the closest and furthest points in a scene that are rendered sharply in the resulting image. For any given focal length or zoom setting, a wider aperture will give a tighter depth of field, enabling you to better blur the background in your shot.
The best solution for portraiture on a DX-format camera like the D3400 is to buy a ‘fast’ 50mm prime lens with a wider available aperture. They don’t have to be big, heavy or expensive. We’d recommend the AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G, which costs around £200/$216. But avoid the older AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D lens: it won’t autofocus on Nikon D3xxx and D5xxx series bodies.
Why do my images look so much brighter on my camera’s LCD than on my computer screen, and when I print them? Matt Thorne, via email
Jason says… Camera manufacturers tend to make the LCD displays on the backs of cameras quite bright, so that they can be more easily viewed outdoors in the sun. However, the brightness of the display can be misleading if you’re trying to judge exposure settings in playback mode.
For greater accuracy, download an image from your camera and view it simultaneously on your computer screen and in playback mode on your camera’s LCD. Adjust the brightness of the LCD in your camera’s Settings menu until they’re a good match. For ultimate accuracy when reviewing images on your camera’s LCD screen, learn how to use the histogram, which gives a graphical display of the lowlights, midtones and highlights in an image.