Fun with reverse lens macros

[Romy Ocon]

With the onset of the rainy season in our islands and not having much time to go birding, I've started having fun with reverse lens macros. I attached the reversed 50 mm f/1.8 II to the front of my 100 2.8 US macro and secured the whole thing with masking tape. I'm still experimenting what settings work best, but I'm already amazed how high a magnification one can achieve with this technique!


SHOOTING THE TIP OF A BALLPEN. I reversed my 50 mm 1.8 II (I manually fixed the aperture at f/5.0, my presumed optical sweet spot of the 50 mm), then taped it to the front of my 100 2.8 USM macro. The minimum focus distance was circa 20-30 mm, and that results into unbelievable magnification. The lens combo was mounted on my 7D and all was supported by a 410 gearhead and 455B tripod. Lighting was available light coming from a window to the right.




Here's a processed 100% of the tip of the ballpen - 7D + 100 2.8 macro + reversed 50 1.8 II (aperture manually fixed at f/5), f/8 on the 100 macro, ISO 200, 2 sec, gear head/tripod.




Uncropped full frame, resized to 1200x800. Note the extreme vignetting even with an APS-C sensor.




I think I can live without an MP-E 65 for a while. ;D

[Bobby Kintanar]

Ahihihihi, you just keep raising the bar with all your splendid experiments Ka Mastah! That ball-pen macro aptly demonstrates the laws of molecular adhesion! Hehehe. :-)

[Romy Ocon]

Jun 30, 2010 4:02:39 GMT Bobby Kintanar said:

Ahihihihi, you just keep raising the bar with all your splendid experiments Ka Mastah! That ball-pen macro aptly demonstrates the laws of molecular adhesion! Hehehe. :-)

Hehehe..... thanks, Bobby. I thought first of having a small ant donate its body to the advancement of Philippine photographic science, but discarded that in favor of an inanimate object. I balked at the idea of having fun at the expense of another creature's life .

Bwahaha, that really cracks me up! Hmmmm, I wouldn't mind trying this out on an ant at all, hmmmmm.... :-)

[mantarey]

Amazing Mastah Romy, I wonder if you can compute the magnification you just did with this setup.

[Romy Ocon]

Jun 30, 2010 5:02:47 GMT @mantarey said:

Amazing Mastah Romy, I wonder if you can compute the magnification you just did with this setup.

Per my rough estimate, the magnification is at least 4x before the 1.6 crop factor.

[Nilo Arribas Jr.]

Wow, extremely short DOF!! thanks for sharing Romy.