thank you so much! I am a newbie and it is so encouraging to have a photo admired...I'm not gonna lie. btw - enjoyed many of your shots.
sure!
Extension tubes are placed between the lens and the camera. They have the same connectors as a lens, and allow pass through of metering and AF from the lens (though AF is next to useless, you really need to MF).
What they do is shorten the minimum focus distance for any lens. They also obliterate any long/infinity foucing so basically your lens can only focus from less than an inch to maybe a few feet at best (that depends on how many and what size tubes you use, and on what lens)
So they are a macro "solution"...
some others are buying a macro lens, or using close up filters. I don't know anything about close up filters ....
and a macro lens would be great (and better)...except they are hundreds of dollars....
I have Kenko tubes. They sell for EF and EF-S lens so if you have the latter make sure you get the right tubes. They are around $179 new and can be had used for roughly $150 or less pretty easily. That's for a set of 3.
Hope that's helpful!