make your own macro lens (17mm reversed)

[John Beale]

I don't have a true macro lens but I was curious what I could do by putting a Sigma 17-70 at 17mm, reversed back to front, in front of my 20D with the 100mm/2 (non-macro) mounted. This should give a magnification of almost 6x lifesize. I tried it out on a $5 bill and Lincoln's right eye fills the frame. As usual with macro lenses it is very tricky to get good focus. I added quite a bit of USM in PS.



(full frame is shown)

 

[MachuRoberts]

but that looks awsome!

i am supprised at how sharp it is, and i am going to assume that you manual focused that up as well!

i would be curious to see the original!

--
-Machu

Yes, I realize speling is a chalunge for sum of us...I am inkluded in that grup, so pleze foregiv me.

The Beauty of IR

 

[nameIess]

the result look amazing... but i really did not understand what you did exactly, can you please explain with the use of simpler english

 

[John Beale]

Maybe some pictures would help. It probably looks like some kind of joke, but I've seen many other descriptions of this kind of setup. You can do it with any two lenses. Often people use two 50mm lenses, one normal and one reversed, that gets you a 1:1 macro lens. If the reversed lens has a shorter focal length, then you get magnification. The magnification amount is just the ratio of the two lenses. I set my zoom at 17mm, so in this case, the mag. ratio is 100/17 or about 5.88 It would be better to use a male-male "T-ring" coupler to thread the lenses together by the front filter threads, but if you want something quick, cheap and temporary, you can just use tape like I did.

 

[John Beale]

One other comment- pretty much everyone doing macro work uses manual focus. The AF mechanism usually doesn't work well with microsopic distances.

With my "do it yourself" macro-lens-combination, you have a huge heavy element attached to the front of a normal non-macro lens. If you tried to use AF it might damage the focus mechanism due to the added weight, so I definitely would not want to try it.

 

[ju_ju]

perfection. great idea will try it if needed .

jooooools

 

[spider227489]

I did this back in the film days, 40 years ago. Works great.
--
Ron in Vernon, B.C.
Panasonic FZ50
Panasonic FZ30
Canon 10D
Argus C3
Kodak Brownie Hawkeye

 

[Victor Engel]

Me too. I got magnification enough to see individual cells of a flower using a 400mm/50mm combo. Then I tried making a projector contraption with the same setup (or at least a similar contraption). I had one of those Bible on a 2x2 piece of plastic, laid out with the pages side by side in a grid. By projecting it across the room this way, I was able to read it on the wall.

In this case, the 50mm lens was closest to the Bible, and the 400mm lens went between the 50 and the wall.
--
http://www.pbase.com/victorengel/

 

[roypogi]

So this means that I can put any cheap old manual lens say 24mm F2 infront of a 85mm 1.8 and get 3.5x lifesize?

Where do we get those male to male rings?

 

[John Beale]

2filter.com has this kind of ring up to 58mm in size.
http://www.2filter.com/prices/products/macroring.html

you also use an adaptor ring, if your two lenses have different filter sizes.
http://www.2filter.com/prices/products/rings.html

 

[JimH]

a teacher of ours said we could bring any notes we wanted in for a test, but it had to fit on an 8.5 X 11 inch piece of paper.

Since a friend of mine and I worked for a newspaper at the time, we took the entire Cliff Notes for the book over which the test would be down and shot it on the line camera, reducing it down to all fit on a single sheet.

We then supplied these to everyone in class.

It was readable with the naked eye and the teacher and everyone else got a good laugh out of it. He was also a bit more careful with what he allowed after that.

--
Jim H.

 

[Glenn NK]

Thanks for the reminder - I heard about the trick in the early sixties. Actually what I recall was that the technique used just one lens - reversed - like looking through binoculars backwards. It would require the help of a good machinist though.
--
Glenn NK
Victoria, BC

 

[KozmoKramer]

Looks amazing! What are the different drawbacks of reversing a lens like that? Manual focus I know, but what about everything else? What's the focus distance and such like???

Hmmm, didn't look like (from the links you provided in the thread somewhere) I can reverse the lenses I want

I'd love to use my Canon EF 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6L IS USM lens (77mm filter size) with the kit lens reversed, EFS 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 (58mm size). Couldn't find the right step-up/down rings plus adapters, etc. Maybe I'm not looking at it right?? 300/18 would render, I think, 16_2/3x magnification! Is this possible?? The only other lens I'd have to use is the 50mm 1.8 MkII.

Any help would be much appreciated Thanks!
--
KK
http://imageevent.com/kzmokramr2

 

[Jason198448]

I tried doing this awhile back and the only drawback was that I had to use a tripod for all of the shots. Not a big deal, but something I hadn't thought about until actually trying it. You're dealing with a razor-thin DOF, so any movement and you're out of focus.

Oh, I guess that'd be another drawback...you'd need rather small apertures and lots of light to get any kind of usable DOF for a 3-dimensional object.

--

--Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.
--Albert Einstein

 

[John Beale]

Looks amazing! What are the different drawbacks of reversing a
lens like that? Manual focus I know, but what about everything
else? What's the focus distance and such like???

The focus distance is fixed at 44 mm based on the EOS lens mount clearance. The depth of field is extremely small and you have to have everything motionless, rigidly mounted, and use a remote and mirror lockup to get clear images.

I'd love to use my Canon EF 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6L IS USM lens (77mm
filter size) with the kit lens reversed, EFS 18-55mm (58mm size).

You could do this with two step-down rings (77-62 + 62-58) plus one 58-58 macro coupler. Before you buy those though, you can do a quick test just putting the lenses together with masking tape and see if the image looks promising. I have that 18-55 kit lens and I'm not super impressed with it, I would suggest the 50/1.8 prime instead.

On the 8 Mpixel 1.6 crop factor cameras like my 20D, about 6x macro is really plenty. That's because the pixel size is 6.4 microns. With a 6x lens that would be one pixel per micron of your subject. That is roughly the size of two wavelengths of green light. Even with perfect lenses, perfect focus, no subject motion, etc. the image will start being blurred by diffraction if you try much more magnification. So beyond about 6x, increasing the mag. just reduces your field of view without giving you appreciably more detail.

Even 6x requires extreme care. I tried an image of a penny, and the date "2006" filled the field of view. The surface of the penny was more or less in focus, but the raised edges of the letters were clearly not in focus... I think that's less than the thickness of a piece of paper.

 

[JimH]

I need to try this myself.

One thing I've found to be useful for higher magnification macros is to shoot with flash.

The length of the flash pulse from an electronic flash unit is very brief. This gives you the effect of a very high shutter speed and that's very useful for eliminating the effects of camera shake.

It's pretty hard to hold still at such magnifications!

If you use an automatic flash and get it fairly close to the subject, the length of the flash pulse can be extremely short. And if the flash supplies all or most of the light, then it can freeze movement quite well.

--
Jim H.

 

[KozmoKramer]

Thanks for the tips, I appreciate it! Didn't think of doubling up the step-down rings, ha ... good call!

Well, I just ordered the 77-62 with the 62-58 (for the kit lens) and 62-52 (for the 50mm prime) step down rings and a coupler for both lenses. I put both of them up to the lens and viewed a nickle and both work! The 50mm does look better, however, as much more light is getting through. Figured why not get the setup for both lenses anyways at this price because the kit is still usable and the magnification is a lot higher for maybe some other interesting shots.

I wonder what kind of use this is going to be (as far as taking good, interesting, printable photos)? Even if it's nothing that "great," it'll still be fun for the small cost, lol. Thanks again for bringing this up again (as I've seen this a few times now and just never asked about it or tried it myself). Cheers!
--
KK
http://imageevent.com/kzmokramr2

 

[Biking Viking]

Ran down in the basement and found a damaged old awful Tokina 100-300mm 5.6-6.7 in my haz mat bin, which hasn't been collected yet.

Stuck it on my 30D and hand held my 28-105 reversed in front. Had to crank the camera to 3200ISO to get a usable hand hold shutter speed, still there is some motion blur or maybe just from my inability to hold the focus distance.

Here's the bottom part of the letter 'm' that starts your post subject title:



Now my office smells of paint from the buckets that was in that haz mat bin with the lens.

 

[lulalake]

Adorama has 62mm ones also.

Jules

 

[Biking Viking]

They are around 130 pixels tall. That's a hefty magnification!