Rail or no rail?

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Mr F Stop.

Mr F Stop.

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My wife is stuck in the UK and only has with her a 70/300 lens. So I bought her some extension tubes so she could do some macro shots. But she is finding it very hard to focus. Mainly because of the gearing on the focus ring. So could she mount her camera on a rail then the tripod to make focusing easier and more precise? I am learning macro as well and took this with my D500 and a Sigma 105 2.8 Macro comments welcome.
macro seed with due.JPG
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If I remember (and I may not as my brain has taken lockdown seriously and not appeared for most of this year) but if you're using rings on a zoom you can also use the zoom to focus.
 
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If the tripod head uses an Arca swiss head clamp a longish Arca swiss type camera plate could be used. Mount plate on bottom of camera so it can move forward or back when head's clamp is loosened. Loosen plate clamp slightly and slide camera/plate back/forth to get coarse focus then tighten clamp and fine tune focus.

Some video tripod heads such as from Manfrotto have a sliding plate/clamp that are not Arca swiss but could be used same way.
 
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A close-up diopter often works better than extension tubes on a zoom as the focus doesn't change when zooming. Canon 500D diopters come in several filter thread sizes and can be made to fit any lens with step-up or step-down rings.
 
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