Reversing ring....help!

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jolsterj

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OK The long awaited reversing ring arrived yesterday.

I fitted it after a bit of a struggle and began my quest.


:help::help:


Where the heck do I begin?


I know I have to manual everything but after lots of settings and just getting a black pic I got fed up.


Could someone give me a push in the right direction?


I am off out most of the day so will hopefully have some answers from you lovely guys/gals when I return.

Thanks in advance.:wave::wave:
 
jolsterj said:
I know I have to manual everything but after lots of settings and just getting a black pic I got fed up.:
Click to expand...

Hi,

The set up is fairly simple but the technique is a little tricky.
With reverse lens macro, the usual and most likely lenses that are reached for are a 50mm prime or a 24 0r 28mm prime and with the optional addition of extension tubes.
It kinda goes without saying that flash is a must for reverse lens macro.

After the lens is attached, set your aperture manually to at least f/11 or f/16, this will unfortunately cause the viewfinder to become very dark, my set up has an aperture lever on the lens, I flick this lever up and hold it there with my left finger, opening the aperture blades, allowing a little more light to achieve focus, before pressing the shutter, I release the aperture lever and then take the picture. Tricky but possible.

Let us know how you get on :thumbs:
 
A GUESS, but if you set it to the max aperture of the lens(as it wont open or close anyway) try av modeand watch the exposure on the screen:shrug:
 
Thanks for the quick response, I will try it again when I return home.
 
I tried it with my D40 a few nights ago. I could not see anything due to it being in the evening and too dark. I was having to guess where to point the lens and the adjust and try again, its all trial and error. I got there in the end.
 
fletch5 said:
A GUESS, but if you set it to the max aperture of the lens(as it wont open or close anyway) try av modeand watch the exposure on the screen:shrug:
Click to expand...

If you step the aperture down, the press DoF preview and remove the lens (whilst still pressing DoF preview) it will stay stepped down IIRC
 
jolsterj said:
Where the heck do I begin?

I know I have to manual everything but after lots of settings and just getting a black pic I got fed up.
Click to expand...

It does not have to be manual everything - at least you can use your camera to set shutter speed if you state the correct lens aperture. I am speaking of certain Nikon cameras here (like D200/300 and so on) can't tell how it's done on Canon unfortunately. For simplicity sake initially when setting up lens parameters in D200/D300, focal length of the lens you use reversed can be the same as when you use it normally.

Depending on what type of macro you want to do, you might find a Mark Dijstelberge site (participating on Dpreview forums) quite useful - he does fantastic macro photos with his reversed lenses (old manual Sigma 24mm f/2.8) and has an excellent description of his setup there.

Here is a link that will give you some insights as to magnification ratios you can achieve with different size lenses reversed.

When using reverse mounted lens directly on camera, the DOF in this technique is very shallow. So you might need to set your lens to something like f/13 to get the DOF reasonably acceptable (depends on a subject). Mark mentiones this in his blog and the technique for focussing (link above). The best lenses to use in this respect are old manual lenses which have an aperture ring.

Magnification - basically smaller focal length gives more magnification reversed. I.e. 24mm reversed will give you more magnification than 50mm reversed. Mind you the 24mm is quite difficult to use when you just begin the reverse macro photography, so I'd recommend to start with 50mm and gradually go down to wider lenses.
 
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