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Macro Photography - Macro Lens Reverse Ring - Macro in a Budget Series Part 1

Macro photography aims to make largely magnified images of very small objects at very short focal distances. There are dedicated macro lenses for this purpose, but as they are very expensive piece of equipment, we will in this series of articles introduce you to various alternatives of using a macro lens for macro photography. We will discuss hot to capture amazing images of the micro world in a budget.

Macro Lens Reverse Ring

macro reverse ring for macro photography reverse mounting lens

Macro Reversing rings are basically adapters with a male filter thread on one side and a rear lens mount on the other. We attach the lens to the reversing ring by its filter mount and then attach the setup to the camera.

macro reverse ring for macro photography reverse mounting lens

Since the lens does not have any contact with the camera sensors you will have to manually adjust the settings. It is also a good idea to shift the lens to manual focus mode before reverse mounting it on the camera body.

macro reverse ring for macro photography reverse mounting lens

Now that you have successfully reverse mounted your lens on to the camera body all you need to do is get the settings right and click away. The lens which we are using here is a canon 50mm prime (normal) lens f1.8. If you click with our current setup you will find that the depth of field is very low. The reason being when the canon lens is taken out of the body it is usually in a full open mode or in other ways by default it is set to its lowest aperture that is f1.8 and that is the reason for the shallow depth of field.

macro reverse ring for macro photography reverse mounting lens

In order to set the desired aperture for a given shot you will have to correctly mount the lens on the camera body and make use of the depth of field preview button.

macro reverse ring for macro photography reverse mounting lens

Mount the lens normally on to the camera body, set the mode to manual, select the desired aperture, in this case inorder to show you the difference we have selected f8. Press the depth of field preview button and while keeping it pressed unmount the lens when the camera is still on. And you will have your lens in the set aperture.

macro reverse ring for macro photography reverse mounting lens

Here are a few sample shots we took with the reverse mounted canon 50mm f 1.8 using the macro reverse ring.

5 rs indian coin shot using the canon 50 mm f1.8 prime reverse mounted using the macro lens  reverse  ring
5 Rs coin shot at normal magnification
macro reverse ring for macro photography reverse mounting lens
5 Rs coin shot after reverse mounting the lens
macro reverse ring for macro photography reverse mounting lens
macro reverse ring for macro photography reverse mounting lens

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