In the ever-evolving world of digital photography, creators constantly push the boundaries of technical experimentation to achieve unique perspectives. Photographer, videographer, and social media creator Max Adams, known online as @max_madeit, has recently captured the attention of the global photography community with a series of jaw-dropping Instagram Reels. Adams constructed an extraordinarily long, Frankenstein-esque macro setup that looks more like a piece of heavy artillery than a photographic tool, utilizing multiple extension tubes, teleconverters, and a massive super-telephoto lens.
The contraption has quickly gone viral across platforms, not only for its sheer comedic scale—requiring two separate tripods just to keep the entire assembly aloft—but also for the astonishing optical physics involved in making such a rig function. In his initial breakdown video, Adams reveals the heavy-duty components that make up the absurdly long signal chain. The foundation of the rig is a high-end Sony A1 Mark II camera body, paired with a massive Canon EF 400mm f/2.8 L IS USM super-telephoto lens. To push the magnification far beyond normal operating parameters, Adams added a 2x teleconverter, a 1.4x teleconverter, and no fewer than seven extension tubes linked together in sequence.
The resulting optical monster creates a unique set of field challenges. Because of the inherent design limitations of a 400mm super-telephoto lens, the minimum focusing distance of the setup dictates that any prospective subject must be placed roughly ten feet away from the front element of the glass. Despite this cumbersome working distance, Adams managed to successfully capture a detailed photograph of a tiny flower, demonstrating that the complicated stack of glass and air could actually resolve an image.
Determined to explore the limits of extreme magnification further, Adams returned with a follow-up experiment documented in a subsequent video. Addressing the logistical hurdle of the 400mm lens’s long minimum focusing distance, he swapped out the massive super-telephoto optic for a much shorter 100mm f/2.8 macro lens. Keeping the stack of extension tubes in play, Adams completely transformed the working dynamics of the rig. For this test, the subject—an ordinary grain of rice—was positioned a mere six inches away from the front element of the lens.
The resulting image offers an extreme close-up view of the grain’s surface texture, revealing microscopic details, ridges, and imperfections that are completely invisible to the naked eye. In fact, the magnification achieved by the combination of the macro lens and the extension tubes rendered the grain of rice so massive in the frame that it pushed well beyond standard 1:1 macro reproduction ratios, entering the realm of high-magnification photomacrography.
The viral nature of the videos naturally drew a wave of humorous reactions and comments from fellow photographers and social media users. In the comment section of his first video showcasing the dual-tripod rig, viewers could not resist poking fun at the sheer impracticality of taking such a device out into the real world. One commenter jokingly suggested that the massive, cumbersome setup would be "perfect for street photography," while another dryly remarked that it would be "nice for handheld stacks."
While using seven extension tubes attached to a multi-kilogram telephoto lens certainly stretches the limits of practical field photography—and would be entirely impossible to shoot with handheld—Adams’s rig does not actually hold the absolute record for extreme tube stacking. That crown currently belongs to YouTuber Nicolas Grant, who previously gained internet notoriety by slapping an even more ludicrous twenty extension tubes onto a single camera body to see what kind of distorted image could possibly be salvaged.
For adventurous creators looking to experiment with their own bizarre optical setups, the growing popularity of such DIY macro projects highlights the versatility and accessibility of extension tubes, which can often be found at discounted prices during seasonal retail periods like Black Friday sales. While capturing usable images through stacks of teleconverters and half a dozen extension tubes requires immense patience, precise lighting, and absolute stabilization, experiments like these remind the photography community that curiosity and playfulness remain vital parts of the artistic process.
