playing with reversed lens macro

lilmomma

discovered this technique yesterday, and shot a couple test frames. Can't wait to really get creative with this!! pretty cool!


nothing exciting, just a really small hairclip. but I like the lines!





my ring. I have a wedding coming up and I can't wait to use this method for ring/detail shots

had no idea it was so scratched...eew

GOLDENORFE

welcome to the world of macro mellisa

will take a while to get used to short working distance and very little dof.

what flash are u using? highlights are very bright, maybe need a bit of diffusion to soften light
phil

lilmomma

Yeah, the shallow dof is difficult! I actually didn't even break out my flash. the hair clip just happened to be sitting on my kitchen island, but there's some lights above it. Then I took one of my rings off to play with that. I'm definately not a macro-girl, and will never be as brave as some of you to try this with bugs, but I had read about this technique and wanted to give it a shot. it was my 50mm opened wide (1.8) held up backwards to the camera. Had the ISO up to 4000 because the light was not enough for a decent handheld shutter speed... but ended up that I like the grainy look (on the ring one anyway, not normally)

anyway just playing around with it, but can really see some fun possibilities with this technique! It's unlikely i'll ever buy a dedicated macro lens, far too many wish list items ahead of it.

thanks for the advice!

CyberSteak

ok um...***NEWBIE ALERT*** Reversed lense?

lilmomma

well what I did was take off my 50mm, manually open the aperture blade, and held it really good backwards against the camera (reversed lens). then you have to get really close and move in/out to focus. I guess you're supposed to use two lenses and hold one lens backwards against the lens mounted on the camera, but i couldn't get it to work like that. interesting, nonetheless.

if anyone wants to chime in on tips for using two lenses, feel free. I have 50mm f/1.8 and 18-105 f/3.5-5.6. don't know if my kit lens would even work.

Lord Vetinari

Good ones
Some info on body reversing and lens reversing here http://www.flickr.com/groups/macroviewers/discuss/72157594536861701/
Brian v.