Fotodiox Macro Reverse Ring Adapter
Macro lenses don’t run cheap. If you’re not shooting a ton of macro photos or video, investing in this type of lens might not be at the top of your priority list. Macro shots are, however, very appealing and at times necessary to capture. In the video (below) I show how you can turn your portrait lens into a macro by simply threading on a Macro Reverse Ring Adapter
For the Canon 40mm pancake lens I’m using, this is F/2.8. Shooting macro shots this wide open means that you will have an extremely shallow depth of field and only a very narrow plane will be in focus. This new Canon 40mm STM pancake lens also has a minimum focus distance of 11″ inches, but by using the Reverse macro trick, you can focus on objects about 1″ away. One thing to keep in mind is that Canon EF or EF-S lenses will default back to it’s widest aperture when removed from the camera. You will not be able to change the aperture value once the lens is disconnected from the camera. There are two ways to work around this.
1) Use a lens with a manual aperture ring. This will allow you to dial the F stop in regardless of the electronic connection being lost by reversing the lens around. Nikon lenses work great on Canon DSLRs and many have manual aperture rings.
2) If you want to use your EF lens, turn on Live View (video mode) and change the aperture. With the camera still powered on with Live View running, remove the lens DO NOT TURN THE CAMERA OFF. The Aperture will remain at the last setting. You can now thread on the Macro Reverse Ring Adapter and capture images with a larger depth of field ie: f/10, f/16, etc. This will keep more of your image in focus. The two photos below illustrates what this looks like. The first photo was taken at f/16 and the second at f/2.8.
Be sure that you purchase the correct filter thread size. You can check this on the front of your lens, the filter thread size will be indicated by a number followed by mm. For the Canon 40mm I’m using, the filter thread is 52mm. You can find several of these Macro Reverse Rings for about $6-$7 dollars on Amazon (Click Here)
Macro Reverse Ring Adapter
The best deals for about $2.00 US dollars for Macro Reverse Adapters can be found on eBay (Click Here)
Macro Reverse Ring Adapters
Just to you let you know (and maybe people know about this already) tricking the lens in video mode also works for m43! Excellent tip!
Interesting. Have you had a chance to compare these to the macro extension tubes? I’ve used neither, but they both look cheap and fun to experiment with. I wonder what the difference is.
@Jay I have used both macro rings and the main difference was that with the tubes, I was able to stack and alter the level of magnification. With the reverse ring adapter I was limited to only the magnification that the single ring created. Both options worked well for me. One thing to keep in mind is that with the tubes, since the magnification was so intense with the longest extension, I needed micro adjustment rails to keep the camera steady and to really dial in focus by moving my camera slightly towards or away from the object I was focusing on.
With these Canon body’s you can set your aperture in photo mode and use the DOF preview button(that’s the small one under the big one next to your lens), and while holding this button pop your lens off. The main advantage with this method instead of movie mode, is that the mirror is still down and your sensor isn’t active while being exposed. That will reduce the amount of dirt you get onto your sensor when you lay around in a flowergarden trying to get some macro shots