Reverse lens technique — Poor man’s macro
Reverse lens technique is very easy to set up. It is a cheap solution for macro photography. One normally goes for a dedicated macro lens for macro photography or they may switch to ‘macro’ mode available in their cameras. While buying a dedicated macro lens is not affordable for most people, and using the macro mode may not give you a good magnification. However, one can go for various inexpensive techniques for macro photography like close up filters, macro converters etc. I follow the lens reversal or reverse lens technique for my macro photography.
Read: Introduction to Macro Photography
What is reverse lens technique?
It is basically mounting your lens backwards on to the camera. Doing so, the magnification a lens can capture increases. I am going to show you how to reverse a 50mm prime lens. You can follow the same technique to reverse any type of lens you have. I prefer reversing a prime lens for macro since prime lenses give sharp images and has good color rendition.
Read: Top 8 Reasons Why you should buy a 50mm lens
Equipment Required
- A DSLR/SLR camera. This technique will not work for point and shoot cameras.
- A lens you want to reverse.
- A reverse ring for your lens. A reverse ring is used to reverse mount the lens. A reverse ring has two sides — a filter thread side and a mount side. If the filter diameter of your lens is 52mm, then you should buy a reverse ring which has a filter thread diameter of 52mm (the filter diameter of the lens is written on the front element of the lens)
Steps to reverse a lens
NOTE: If you don’t have a reverse ring, you can just reverse your lens, hold it in front of your camera and see how it works.
Canon 50mm f1.8 lens and a 52mm reverse ring.
Step 1: Attach the reverse ring to the front element of your lens via the filter thread.
Step 2: Detach the lens and mount it backwards. Now the back side of the lens is exposed outside.
Here is the comparison of magnification:
What’s the trade-off?
- Since you are reversing the lens, it loses its electronic communication with the camera. So auto focus will not work and you cannot change the aperture of the lens either.
- You lose the ability to focus when reverse mount the lens. There will be only one fixed focal plane and you have to physically move yourself to focus the subject.
- The lens cannot focus at infinity.
- The depth of field becomes extremely shallow.
- Reversing lens causes accumulation of dust and particles in the sensor.
Read how to overcome the challenges while using this technique: Secrets of Macro Photography using the reverse lens are
Below are some of the images I had taken using the reverse lens technique:
i have been trying to get hold of this reverse ring for a very long time now! its available on amazon, but m not sure of its availability in india. m residing in chennai, can u give some online e-commerce site links where i can buy this reverse ring. thanks!
It’s available on ebay india.
[...] doesn’t use any expensive gear for high magnification macro photography. He uses Canon 50D and reverse mount Exakta 28mm f2.8 prime lens. He focus stack the images to extend the depth of field. Below are some [...]
[...] Read: Poor Man’s Macro — The lens reversal technique [...]
Great Article, Thanks. What happens with a long focal lens? more magnification or less? 50mm lens vs a 200mm lens? which will give more magnification? Thanks Amir
Hi, Amir. Thanks for reading. When the focal length of the reverse lens decreases, the magnification decreases. If you want to know more about magnification of reverse lens setup, please read: http://shutterstoppers.com/secrets-macro-photography-reverse-lens/
Sorry but using a longer focal length reduces the magnification. When you shoot with normal lens orientation, a longer focal length means a larger magnification. When you reverse the lens, the opposite happens. Using a lower focal length gives you maximum magnification and of course, a better depth of field for sharper images.
Sorry for the mistake. I meant to say, when stacking a reversed lens on a longer focal length lens, the magnification increases since the distance between the lens and the sensor increases. Thank you for correcting me, Narayan. I have made the corrections. And thanks for reading. Cheers!
Hi ,
Thanks for the great article on macro photography. am unable to set the aperture on the lens using the suggested method. I am trying this on canon eos 450D using 50 mm 1.4 lens. Please help.
Hi, Praveen. Glad you liked the article. Is your 450 D has a DOF preview button? If you don’t know, can you please refer it to the camera manual to find the button? DOF button helps in closing down the aperture to the f-number you set. So, you might want to locate the DOF preview button of your camera. Once you find the button, follow these steps:
Set the desired f-number –> Press and hold the DOF button –> while holding the DOF button, detach the lens from the camera. Now your lens is closed down to the aperture you set.
Thanks for the quick response, Vidhu.
The camera does have the button and I tried exactly the same thing as you mentioned. After the lens is reversed, would the camera settings show the closed down aperture? or would it still show F00?
I checked my image, it shows F00.
Please help.
Ok. As I mentioned in the post, for canon lenses, you cannot change the aperture once you reverse it. It shows F00 because the camera has no communication with the lens. So, in metadata it cannot add the aperture information. So, if you want to change the aperture again, you need to mount it normally and redo the whole process. It is frustrating, I know. But once, you get the hang of this technique, you will know which aperture you need to use when you see the lighting conditions.
I have EOS 550D. My qn is whether it is harmful to dislodge a lens while turning the camera on.
It is not a good practise. But it is okay if you are doing it quickly. And, try to avoid frequent reversing, too.
So my suggestion is to get a cheap manual lens which has aperture ring. Exakta, Helios, Takumar will do the job. Whats your opinion?
Yes. That would be the best idea.
Thanxx Bro its grt article
bt i would like to knw i have 50mm f1.8 with simple uv filter n 550D
do i need to buy any filter ring ? ?
waiting fr reply thanxx
Thanks for reading, Rishi
A UV filter will not work for this technique. You need to buy a reverse ring. The filter diameter of the 50mm f1.8 lens is 52mm. So, you need to buy a 52mm reverse ring.
Thanx for reply bro
?????
i want to knw from where i can get 52mm reverse ring
i live in chandigarh
if i have to order it online please provide it
thanxx
You can buy it from ebay india. Just search for a 52mm reverse ring. I hope this helps
[...] For more information on techniques on reverse-lens macro photography check out http://shutterstoppers.com/reverse-lens-technique/ [...]
[...] Reverse lens technique — Poor man's macro [...]
[...] Reverse lens technique for macro photography [...]
[...] Read: Poor man’s macro — The reverse Lens Technique [...]
Thanks Vidhu, Its a great article and really helpful. Just one quick question can we do this technique with the other lenses as well like 55- 200 mm (Nikon D5100)
Yes, you can. But when the focal length increases, the magnification decreases for a reverse mounted lens. So, if you want a 1:1 magnification, reverse a 50mm lens. And if you want a magnification beyond 1, use a lens which has focal length smaller than 50mm.
nice and helpful article chief! was wondering if I could use the reverse lens technique with the same ring for the standard 18-55mm and 75-300mm lenses. Will using this technique on the 75-300mm give better macro visibility?
Thanks for reading
As I mentioned in the post, reverse ring can be attached on the front element of the lens. So the diameter of a reverse ring should be same as the filter diameter of the lens. So for a 18-55mm kit lens, the filter diameter is 58mm. So only a reverse ring of 58mm can be used with this lens. But the filter diameter of a 75-300mm lens is more than 58mm (if I am right, I think it is 62mm or something. Please check it on the front element of the lens) So you can’t use the reverse ring of a 18-55mm lens on a 75-300mm lens.
Regarding the magnification: As I mentioned before, the magnification a reversed lens can give depends on the focal length. A reversed 50mm focal length lens gives a 1:1 magnification. And if you reverse a lens with a focal length smaller than 50mm, it gives a magnification above 1X. Similarly, if the focal length of the reversed lens is more than 50mm, the magnification will be less than 1x, which is not good for macro. Thus, an advantage of reversing a 18-55mm lens is that you can change the magnification (from 1X to more than 3X) by the changing the focal length. Hope this helps
thanks! It did!
Cheers!
Cool! Cheers!