Grasshopper!

 

I took these photos on the same day that I took the shots of the yellow flowers seen in this post.  The first two were taken with my Canon Rebel XS using a 50 mm, f 1.8 lens with the macro extension tubes that I talk about here.  I used a piece of cardboard wrapped in aluminum foil to brighten up some of the shaded areas of the shot.  The third photo was taken by my photog buddy, Scott.  It showcases the effect of using the aluminum reflector.

Macro Rocks and Grass

Macro example

As promised, the following is an example of what extension tubes do.  I'll leave the more detailed description to the makers of the tubes themselves, Kenko, but essentially the extension tubes allow a camera's lens to focus closer to it's subject.  This has the effect of magnifying the image being taken. 

The extension tube set that I bought has 3 different tubes;  a 12 mm, a 25 mm and a 35mm.  The lens that I've us for this example is a Canon 50 mm, f1.8. 

This first shot (of a pin cushion) uses no extension tubes, just the lens.  I focused as closely as possible on the pin cushion.

 The next shot used only the 12 mm extension tube and was focused as close as possible:

 This one used the 12 mm combined with the 25 mm extension tubes, focused as close as possible:

 On this last shot, I used a combination of the 12 mm, 25 mm and 35 mm extension tubes: