The biggest reason old film camera lenses work best for this is, unlike most digital lenses, they have aperture control rings on the lens. A zoom lens gives you a “variable macro.”

The thing to remember when using reversed lenses is the wider the focal length, the closer you can get to your subject.

The lenses I used with my old Pentax ME Super film camera are a 50mm Pentax lens with a 49mm filter ring and a Vivitar 28-105mm zoom with a 72mm filter ring. Almost ANY lens will work so long as it has filter threads on the front. For this technique, lens brand or mount type doesn’t matter since you’re not going to be connecting the lens to the camera in the usual way. If not, film camera lenses are cheap at pawn shops, online, or even at garage sales. You might even have your old film camera and a few lenses for it kicking around. If you’re an old guy like me, you remember film. Old film camera lenses are perfect for this technique as they usually have an aperture ring on the lens. I’ve seen the technique where you set the aperture with the lens on the camera, push the depth-of-field preview button and then disconnect the lens, so the aperture stays fixed at that setting. The camera may show a blank where the f/stop would typically be. You’ll also note that once you disconnect the lens from the camera, you no longer have autofocus or aperture control. Trying to hold the camera with a loose lens and adjusting focus might be okay if you’re in the field and have nothing better, but it’s hardly optimal. You can see this technique shown on numerous online videos and while it may give you a macro in a pinch, it’s not very practical. Move very slightly toward and away from the subject to focus. Do you want to see? Take the lens off your camera, hold it backward and tight to the camera body, turn on the camera and get close – very close to a subject. Reversing a lens on the camera – This is the technique we’ll be teaching here.Īlmost any lens can work for this technique including those you usually use on your digital camera.Magnifying lenses (diopters) put in front of an existing lens.Extension tubes or a bellows which increase the distance between the lens and the sensor.A Dedicated Macro Lens – The easiest but the most expensive.There are several ways to make macro photos. Ordinary objects like this set of keys become subjects for interesting photos when viewed as macro images.

Flickr macro photography