Topic: super macro

[kentish cob]

Recently tried some extreme close-ups with a reversed 50mm (Olympus Zuiko) on the front of a 70-300 (Sigma), mounted on my trusty Nikon F4. Film was Agfa Precisa CT100.

Tried a number of compositions at varying focal lengths from 200-300 on the zoom, making the magnification from 4 to 6 times if my arithmetic is correct.
Some quite serious vignetting apparent on a number of shots (doh... why didn't I use the F4's stop-down button to check..?) so I've cropped these quite heavily.
I think more experiments are in order.

As always comments and critiques are welcomed.
 

[Indofunk]

Wow! I love them! So you held the reversed 50mm in front of the 70-300? I've never thought to do that ... may have to try it soon

[kentish cob]

Wow! I love them! So you held the reversed 50mm in front of the 70-300? I've never thought to do that ... may have to try it soon

Thanks Satish.
It's a simple reversing ring... two male threads, back to back which screw into the filter threads of both lenses. Costs about the same as a filter stepping ring, and much easier than trying to hold the lenses in any sort of alignment.
I believe the magnification (on a 35mm frame) is calculated by dividing the focal length of the normally mounted lens by that of the reversed lens.
Therefor a 50mm reversed on a 300mm gives a 6x life-size image (300/50=6).

[Kai-san]

I agree with Satish, very nice shots. I used to do some macro work in the 70's with a Nikkormat Ftn, a Nikkor 50mm f1.4 Ai with reversal ring + a set of bellows. This was the cheapest solution for macro in those days and it worked fine. I did not have an issue with vignetting, probably due to the use of bellows.