Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

I sometimes think that people wonder why anyone would go through the hassle of shooting with a reversed lens vs a good macro lens on tubes. Well, a couple of days ago I shot this spider with a Sigma 150mm OS Macro lens on a full set of tubes and posted some of the pics here. I just had to shoot him with the reversed lens before letting him go to compare the two set ups..... The reversed lens in my opinion wins by a long shot.... Here are the results of the old Vivitar 28mm Olympus OM1 mount reverse mounted to a set of M42 tubes. Images were shot at ISO 320 f/11 1/200th 1/4 power manual flash. Although these images have been down sampled for uploading they can only be fully appreciated if downloaded and expanded.

For anyone interested in reversed lens I have what I consider to be two important points that I can share, 1st is that a good diffused directed flash solution is important, secondly I only use the old Olympus mount lenses because the preview mechanism was built into the lens allowing me to find and focus in on the subject with a wide open aperture and then use the stop down button on the lens to stop down to the appropriate aperture just before taking the shot.

(Download)


(Download)


(Download)


(Download)

rwilson1942 Loc: Houston, TX

agillot

i do same using a 50mm pentax 1-7 lens on a nikon D300 .at time using a ring light / flash .never tried adding tube .i try shooting at f16 or 22 for dept of field , need a lot of light .photos come out sharp and distortion free .i am sure a quality real macro lens would be easier to use , but reversing the lens is fun to do .tried with a 28 mm lens , too hard to use ,the 50 work fine , and cropping work well .

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

It would seem to be very hard to focus at such a small aperture, but if it is working for you then heck... it is working. I try to not shoot at to small of an aperture because of diffusion, but maybe not so important at such high magnification.

The biggest challenge of the 28mm on tubes is that you are shooting at about 3:1 magnification making it very hard to find your subject, often these guys have moved before you can find and focus in on them.

kpmac Loc: Ragley, La

Very nice.

Mark Sturtevant Loc: Grand Blanc, MI

2nd that point with equivalent rigs that I use, which include a reversed Canon 50mm and an old manual reversed Pentax 35mm. Damned hard to find the target at high power, at least so far. I suppose with practice it can be done more easily.

Mark Sturtevant Loc: Grand Blanc, MI

An interesting topic. I went back to compare your pix with the macro. Most were at lower power, judging from the size of the spider at least, but one seemed about the same mag. It looked to me that the other pictures tended to have lower contrast although I do not know why that might be so. The macro lens optics should be high end. Anyway, I like the ones here with the reversed better for that reason alone.
Maybe you could combine and juxtapose two comparable pictures side by side to really see the difference.

RWCRNC Loc: Pennsylvania

RatGMAN Loc: SE Pennsylvania

Very nice set!