Tips on reverse macro shooting please

[SloYerRoll]

Hey macro shooters!

I just bought a reverse ring adapter for my 50mm. and was wondering if you had any tips for my setup. I've already read through all of Brian's (and others) posts in this forum in attempts to educate myself so my first attempts aren't miserable. But I wanted to know if there were any other tips out there that ppl have picked up over the years..

My setup.
D50 (soon to be D200 that's in the mail)
50mm 1.8 (manual aperture) (52mm thread if it matters)
Bunch of pocket wizards, cables & optical slaves
Bunch of strobes
Light stands for the strobes

Then one question:
Is there any way to tell what the ratio is on my setup? I know I'll be getting macro glass sometime. But not for a while since the glass I have my eyes set on isn't cheap (at least to my pockets). So it would be nice to know if I'm really shooting macro or at least what the ratio is.

Thanks for the help and advise.

Cheers,
-Jon

[Lord Vetinari]

Assuming this is reversed directly onto the camera body ?
The magnification should be between 1:1 and 2:1 I think but the easiest way to tell is to take a pic of the mm scale of a ruler then mag= sensor width mm/mm across pic.

Do you have any way of setting the aperture on the lens ?

You will have extremely thin DOF at these magnification levels and normally focusing is achieved by moving the whole camera.

brian V.

[SloYerRoll]

Originally Posted by Lord Vetinari

Assuming this is reversed directly onto the camera body ?
The magnification should be between 1:1 and 2:1 I think but the easiest way to tell is to take a pic of the mm scale of a ruler then mag= sensor width mm/mm across pic.

Do you have any way of setting the aperture on the lens ?

You will have extremely thin DOF at these magnification levels and normally focusing is achieved by moving the whole camera.

brian V.

Hey Brian,

I read your post about how to focus and it just needing practice. So I'm not too worried about that. I just need to get out there and shoot.

Yes I can manually set the aperture "on the fly" (unintentional pun)

[Peasap]

I made my own with an old body cap a uv filter and an old lens plus a dab of crazy glue.

My tip is this:

As you lose aperture control, the aperture is usually wide open and yo can't change it, however, mount the lens on your camera the correct way around, choose the aperture you need for your shot. Here's the tricky bit, without turning off the power hold the depth of field preview button AND at the same time release the lens from the body of the camera.

Remount on your reverse ring and the aperture should be set to what you chose. This works for those lenses that are all electronic without manual aperture settings on the lens.

Originally Posted by SloYerRoll

Hey macro shooters!

I just bought a reverse ring adapter for my 50mm. and was wondering if you had any tips for my setup. I've already read through all of Brian's (and others) posts in this forum in attempts to educate myself so my first attempts aren't miserable. But I wanted to know if there were any other tips out there that ppl have picked up over the years..

My setup.
D50 (soon to be D200 that's in the mail)
50mm 1.8 (manual aperture) (52mm thread if it matters)
Bunch of pocket wizards, cables & optical slaves
Bunch of strobes
Light stands for the strobes

Then one question:
Is there any way to tell what the ratio is on my setup? I know I'll be getting macro glass sometime. But not for a while since the glass I have my eyes set on isn't cheap (at least to my pockets). So it would be nice to know if I'm really shooting macro or at least what the ratio is.

Thanks for the help and advise.

Cheers,
-Jon

[puzzledpaul]

I don't know how you're (manually) setting the aperture ... turning the ring?
... or how far you want to go (spend) with this setup etc ... but with Canon FD (manual) kit there's a couple of adaptors that can be put in the lens mount for aperture control for reverse mount scenarios.

The simpler of these lets user just turn the ring, but the more complex one has a cable release port ... via which you can stop the lens down ... thus allowing you to focus wide open.

Have no idea what these are called in the Nikon world ... 'Macro Auto Ring' in Canon ... and bought mine for about £12 couple of yrs ago off EB.

Good luck.

pp

[SloYerRoll]

The 50mm I have has a fully manual setting for aperture. I set it to f22 then mount it on my camera the "normal" way and the aperture is controlled by the body. When I have aperture set on anything besides f22. I get an "err" message and it won't let me shoot.

So unless I'm misunderstanding how this works. I won't need to set aperture until I'm lining up for the shot. Even then in low light, I can open up the fstop to 1.8 then close it down once I have a good focus.

Below is a shot of my glass. I just did a google screen grab so you could see what I'm talking about.

[puzzledpaul]

Sorry - have to pass on this (now) for 2 reasons - never used Nikon gear and I thought you were talking about reverse mounting a manual focus (no electronics) lens - from the 'AF' on the lens in the pic, I was mistaken.

Looks like you're into the sort of procedure mentioned by peasap - I've only ever reverse mounted 'old steam driven' stuff :)

pp

[SloYerRoll]

Originally Posted by puzzledpaul

Sorry - have to pass on this (now) for 2 reasons - never used Nikon gear and I thought you were talking about reverse mounting a manual focus (no electronics) lens - from the 'AF' on the lens in the pic, I was mistaken.

Looks like you're into the sort of procedure mentioned by peasap - I've only ever reverse mounted 'old steam driven' stuff :)

pp

But this is essentially old steam driven stuff! It will be manual focus to get you in the ballpark for focal length. Then manual aperture. There is NOTHING automatic about this process. I'll be set on full manual for the entire thing.

Thanks for taking time to comment though. If you have any other input for full manual setups. I'm eager to hear

I'll also add that this lens will be reverse mounted directly to the body via 52mm thread to Nikon F mount.

[Skippy]

Originally Posted by SloYerRoll

Hey macro shooters!

I just bought a reverse ring adapter for my 50mm. and was wondering if you had any tips for my setup. I've already read through all of Brian's (and others) posts in this forum in attempts to educate myself so my first attempts aren't miserable. But I wanted to know if there were any other tips out there that ppl have picked up over the years..

My setup.
D50 (soon to be D200 that's in the mail)
50mm 1.8 (manual aperture) (52mm thread if it matters)
Bunch of pocket wizards, cables & optical slaves
Bunch of strobes
Light stands for the strobes

Then one question:
Is there any way to tell what the ratio is on my setup? I know I'll be getting macro glass sometime. But not for a while since the glass I have my eyes set on isn't cheap (at least to my pockets). So it would be nice to know if I'm really shooting macro or at least what the ratio is.

Thanks for the help and advise.

Cheers,
-Jon

Hi Jon, I attempted this way of doing of Macro,
but had no success, I found it to be very awkward to handle.

I see you've had a few replies, I hope you can figure it out.
Good Luck .... Skippy
.

[JetCrocodile]

Originally Posted by SloYerRoll

So unless I'm misunderstanding how this works. I won't need to set aperture until I'm lining up for the shot. Even then in low light, I can open up the fstop to 1.8 then close it down once I have a good focus.

Hi!
Taking into account that working distance in such setting would be some 10cm changing aperture while focusing on some insect would be quite a hard task. Remember you will focusing simply by moving your camera slightly towards or backwards from the subjet, which can be mooving as well... .
Usually I set some aperture and changing the shutter speed trying to get as many photos as possible before scared subject will run/fly away (or before i have to run away ). If I am lucky I can change aperture while shooting the same insect but then I moove my camera away from it. Usually Aperture is set between 2 and 5.6.

Good Luck!