Some tests with turning my 50mm 1.8 into a macro..

M

mattdreyer

Member
This might be old news but my friend mentioned the other day that you can flip your lens round and turn it into some sort of macro. So I grabbed my nifty fifty, 50mm 1.8, and gave it a try.

(when I say flip it round I mean detach it and hold it the wrong way round with the sensor open)

Also towards the end I was just messing around with light leaking onto the sensor when I moved the lens away..

Apologies for the shakes, the hair and eye was selfshot and I'm not so great at multitasking!

 
I heard, not sure if true, that if you take the lens off and let light hit the senor it is bad for it. Maybe someone else who knows can chime in.
 
Haha yeah you're probably right! It cant be good for it in any case, what with dust and such. This was very much a one off!
 
I did this w/ kit lens + 50 1.8.. Similar, except I added another lens as I didnt trust letting in dust/light..

 
Haha nice!
I didnt think of using two lenses.. my friend originally told me about it when we we're talking about faking tilt shift shots.
 
draven4 said:
I heard, not sure if true, that if you take the lens off and let light hit the senor it is bad for it. Maybe someone else who knows can chime in.
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So you have to clean your sensor in total darkness (not to mention changing lenses)?

The macro thing isn't really a "trick", in fact you can buy an adapter that's a lens-to-body mount on one side and a male filter ring on the other. I even have one somewhere.

Extension tubes are really a lot easier to deal with, and you can get them in different sizes - they work fine with video. At longer lengths, you'll lose some light due to the inverse-square behavior of light. You can even stack 'em & go crazy.
 
So you have to clean your sensor in total darkness (not to mention changing lenses)?
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Uhh no..... you change your lenses with the camera off so the sensor is not exposed. The sensor is exposed when the camera is on.

He had his camera on while shooting this, therefore the sensor is exposed to light and dust.
 
Thats really interesting Michael! I didnt know such things existed.

I was going to say, for photography I'v always heard adding glass can reduce the image quality, but I'm guessing for video the image quality isn't as closely scrutinized?

I am probably wrong but I'd like to think that the sensor doesnt get damaged from light, but the reason you dont change lenses with it out is to prevent the sensor from getting damaged from physical things like scratches and dust, which might be why it hides away a lot of the time.
 
Well, the sensor has light focused on it when it's in use; if that would hurt it less than ambient light, I'd be amazed. Sounds kind of wives-tale-ish.

Matt - the "reversing ring" I mentioned doesn't add any glass, it just turns the same glass you've been using around; and extension tubes don't add glass, they place the lens farther from the film plane (for really close work you can buy a rig with a bellows and rails, does the same thing but goes out several inches.

A diopter or "close up lens" is a magnifying lens with filter threads, which does add glass, and some people stack several - there are lots of cheap ones out there, and some pricey ones. But adding glass is ading glass, even great glass can still introduce more issues to a shot.

Another cool technique is to actually shoot through a magnifying glass, using an extension tube - I like to use cheap plastic magnifying glasses for the pretty abberations - no photoshop needed:

ring_big.jpg
 
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