The Nothing
Immoral Support
made a new lens for my 20D
gets me VERY close to the action with 1:1 reproductions!
gets me VERY close to the action with 1:1 reproductions!
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Get a lil closer...
- Thread starter The Nothing
- Start date
Rich in KY
Fortunate Fool
Great pics!
The Nothing
Immoral Support
This post might end up better in the Photo forum... we'll have to see how it turns out when i'm done.
The quick rundown on what I've done.
I took a spare body cap I had laying around (this is the cover that you put on a camera body when you do not have a lens on it) and carved out the inner area of it (so, in my case, the whole area that said Canon). After doing that I took a look at all the old film SLR (FD mount) lenses I have for my AL-1 SLR. I have two lenses that take 52mm lens filters, so I opted to start with that one. I took my Skylight filter and broke the glass out.
That left me with the threaded ring that you would attach to the end of the lens.
I took this ring and superglued it to the body cap I carved up earlier. Important part here is to make sure you have the threaded side up so you can screw the lens into place and to make sure you let thing thoroughly dry before mounting the lens. Put a brick on it and wait till the next day.
Once things are all set you can put the body cap into place and you have a good reversed mount for your lens. Screw the lens into place and the lens should now be on your camera facing backwards! This does mean, however, that there is NO automatic control at all. Running fully manual I usually set my old 50mm to about f/8. This gives a full depth of field around 2mm. Not much to work with, but seems to be the happy point of light and DoF.
This is all easily changed with a fully manual lens like my FD 50mm f1.8. On an automatic lens, you have to mount the lens normally, go to Aperture Priority mode, set your aperture, and hold your DoF preview button while removing the lens while the camera is on.
I guess there are aftermarket manufactured reversal rings that also retain full automatic controls, but they're $$$.
Anyways, with the 50mm, I'm getting about 1:1 reproduction ratios. This means that a 4mm spider will use 4mm of space on the digital image sensor. Similarly a 35mm grasshopper would stretch from one end to the other of a negative on a film camera. A 28mm lens will give you roughly a 2:1 ratio, meaning you've managed to DOUBLE the size of the image. A 4mm spider would take up 8mm of space on the sensor!
All of this I was able to do for free with stuff I had laying around. Its fun and creative, but has no real practical use. Focus is only attained by moving the lens/camera forward and backward in relation to the subject. The focus ring probably only good for about 5mm. DoF is VERY limited, unlike you'd find on a true macro lens.
As far as my post production goes, I do minor contrast and level correction and an occasional crop. All my saturation/colors/contrast/etc settings on the camera I have set to 0. I shoot in RAW and do everything in PS-CS3.
Since pretty much everything is F/8 at all times, here's some additional info
image 1 - 1/60s, iso200, on-camera flash, taken after dark
image 2 - 1/640, iso1600, no flash, taken mid day
image 3 - 1/40s, iso200, on camera flash, taken after dark
image 4 - same as image 3
I'll have some more I took last night with off-camera lighting later today
The quick rundown on what I've done.
I took a spare body cap I had laying around (this is the cover that you put on a camera body when you do not have a lens on it) and carved out the inner area of it (so, in my case, the whole area that said Canon). After doing that I took a look at all the old film SLR (FD mount) lenses I have for my AL-1 SLR. I have two lenses that take 52mm lens filters, so I opted to start with that one. I took my Skylight filter and broke the glass out.
That left me with the threaded ring that you would attach to the end of the lens.
I took this ring and superglued it to the body cap I carved up earlier. Important part here is to make sure you have the threaded side up so you can screw the lens into place and to make sure you let thing thoroughly dry before mounting the lens. Put a brick on it and wait till the next day.
Once things are all set you can put the body cap into place and you have a good reversed mount for your lens. Screw the lens into place and the lens should now be on your camera facing backwards! This does mean, however, that there is NO automatic control at all. Running fully manual I usually set my old 50mm to about f/8. This gives a full depth of field around 2mm. Not much to work with, but seems to be the happy point of light and DoF.
This is all easily changed with a fully manual lens like my FD 50mm f1.8. On an automatic lens, you have to mount the lens normally, go to Aperture Priority mode, set your aperture, and hold your DoF preview button while removing the lens while the camera is on.
I guess there are aftermarket manufactured reversal rings that also retain full automatic controls, but they're $$$.
Anyways, with the 50mm, I'm getting about 1:1 reproduction ratios. This means that a 4mm spider will use 4mm of space on the digital image sensor. Similarly a 35mm grasshopper would stretch from one end to the other of a negative on a film camera. A 28mm lens will give you roughly a 2:1 ratio, meaning you've managed to DOUBLE the size of the image. A 4mm spider would take up 8mm of space on the sensor!
All of this I was able to do for free with stuff I had laying around. Its fun and creative, but has no real practical use. Focus is only attained by moving the lens/camera forward and backward in relation to the subject. The focus ring probably only good for about 5mm. DoF is VERY limited, unlike you'd find on a true macro lens.
As far as my post production goes, I do minor contrast and level correction and an occasional crop. All my saturation/colors/contrast/etc settings on the camera I have set to 0. I shoot in RAW and do everything in PS-CS3.
Since pretty much everything is F/8 at all times, here's some additional info
image 1 - 1/60s, iso200, on-camera flash, taken after dark
image 2 - 1/640, iso1600, no flash, taken mid day
image 3 - 1/40s, iso200, on camera flash, taken after dark
image 4 - same as image 3
I'll have some more I took last night with off-camera lighting later today
The Nothing
Immoral Support
oops...
picture 3, the spider, I skipped (so the above listed image 3 and 4 are actually 4 and 5)
image 3 - f/16, 1/100s, iso1600, no flash, mid day.
picture 3, the spider, I skipped (so the above listed image 3 and 4 are actually 4 and 5)
image 3 - f/16, 1/100s, iso1600, no flash, mid day.
