What if you could get a Macro lens for your DSLR for $8?

If you already have a 50mm prime lens, you may be a lot closer than you thought. With a prime of any manufacture, all it takes is grabbing a reversing ring from Amazon, learning where the aperture control is, and learning a little bit more than you ever really wanted to know about light. As an aside, older lenses work better than newer lenses for this, as a lot of newer lenses don’t have dedicated aperture rings, so you have to mess about with the aperture lug that the camera body would grab ahold of. Trust me, it’s easier to use an older lens. They are often cheaper, to boot.

The way this works is to mount the lens backwards on the camera body, so instead of the lens taking a large swath of light and focusing it down on a small sensor, the lens takes a small patch of light and expands it back into the camera body. A 50mm lens will give you just about a 1:1 reproduction ratio on a Nikon DX body, which is a handy size, and a working distance of about 4 inches. The downside to all of this is that you have to give up a lot of the automatic controls. The camera body will still do auto-ISO adjustments, sure, but you have to tell it what shutter speed to use, you have to adjust the aperture by hand, and focusing involves moving the camera back and forth rather than spinning the focus ring on the lens. The effects, however, are pretty good.

This picture was taken from about 4 inches away from the flower, with an SB-600 and an SB-800 speedlight working on Nikon’s Creative Lighting System. Both lights were turned up pretty high – ¹⁄₄ power on the SB-600 and ¹⁄₂ power on the SB-800, as I had set the lens to f/16, and my ISO was still pretty low. Another thing to keep in mind is that it’s really hard to focus when using reversed lenses, as minor adjustments to the camera’s position change focus significantly. It’s best to use a tripod and put your lights on stands, and then move the object you are taking pictures of in carefully controlled way. But more on that later, if I ever get my next project finished.

This shot of my eye was taken by a friend, who was also shining a small LED flashlight into my eye to help her see when I was in focus. The SB-800 was mounted in a 24″x24″ softbox right next to my face. You can see the flashlight, the camera and the soft box in the reflection in my eye, which is kind of weird. After 60 shots, I still wasn’t quite where I wanted to be in terms of picking up fine details of the iris. Perhaps I can get someone to sit still for me over the weekend and let me burn their optic nerve out while I take countless pictures… of course, when I phrase it that way…

Finally, this is a detail shot of the mount on the back of my Sigma 70-200. Again I had the SB-800 in a soft box, I think on ¹⁄₄ power or better, taking shots waiting for my eyes to stop burning. I’d never thought of this lens as being all that dirty, but when looked at in the light of f/16 and a 1:1 reproduction ratio, it’s pretty damn nasty. I guess this weekend I’ll be cleaning all my lenses and looking for this kind of filth.