This is the 50mm reversed on the front of my 70-300. At 300mm, the magnification is insane. This is at 86mm. Focusing distance is about an inch.
I took more than 100 pictures of this dandelion in 3 different setups. At this magnification, my tripod couldn't even hold the camera steady, and I ended up setting the camera directly on the counter top with the dandelion placed an inch in front of the lens. Lit by a desk lamp on the right.
This is the full frame, no crop. The vignette is a result of the reversed 50mm. I tried a number of apertures to vary DOF, but in the end the smaller end had too harsh of a vignette.
PP includes (basic editing only):
- Various radii of USM
- Shadow highlight
- Gaussian blur, faded
- Color balance, Hue/Sat, B/W, and curves adjustment layers
- Resize, save for web
Some more info about reversing the 50mm:
At first I was hand-holding the 50mm on the front, but at those magnifications it's not possible to hold still, so I tapped it. =)
I then found that my tripod was not sturdy enough, because the shutter made the camera vibrate slightly (but enough at these magnifications.) So I ended up setting my camera on the counter, body, lens, and subject supported by stacks of CD's. By adding a CD or two, I got the placement just right so it sat still.
Here's one straight out of the camera at 70mm, f/16:
And at 300mm, f/20:
The dandelion head was about 8mm in diameter, so I estimate the 70mm focal length at about 2.9X magnification, and the 300mm around 8.75X.
At 300mm, the focal plane was insanely narrow - nearly unusably so. Of course, my aperture only goes to f/20. I notice that on the 180mm macro lens, the aperture goes to f/32. Now I know why! =)
Afterwards, I ordered a reversing ring on eBay. It's like a filter with 2 male threads - one 52mm and one 58mm - for attaching lenses front-to-front. This will let me attach my 50mm (52mm filter size) to either my 18-55 or 70-300 (both 58mm filter size).
Statistics
Place: 7 out of 248 Avg (all users): 6.8428 Avg (commenters): 8.1429 Avg (participants): 6.7738 Avg (non-participants): 6.9200 Views since voting: 4989 Views during voting: 273 Votes: 159 Comments: 29 Favorites: 8 (view)
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
