1. Lens-Reversal WorkflowUnderstanding lens reversal| 00:00 | If you've watched my Foundations of Photography
Macro course, then you've already had a little
| | 00:04 | bit of exposure to lens reversal.
| | 00:07 | To recap, lens reversal is simply the process
of taking an ordinary lens, removing it from
| | 00:12 | your camera, turning it around and
holding it against the front of your camera.
| | 00:17 | When you do this, you actually get a
true macro level of magnification.
| | 00:22 | You also lose all aperture and focus controls.
| | 00:24 | The camera normally controls autofocus and
aperture by communicating with the lens through
| | 00:29 | these electrical contacts.
| | 00:30 | Since those contacts are disconnected, the
camera can't drive either of these features.
| | 00:35 | For focus, you are limited to simply moving
the camera backwards and forwards, but this
| | 00:41 | is how you usually focus a normal macro lens anyway.
So that isn't actually that unusual.
| | 00:45 | By default, the aperture on a lens is always wide open.
| | 00:49 | This allows the maximum amount of light to
pass through your lens and into your camera's
| | 00:54 | viewfinder, ensuring that you have
the best possible view of your scene.
| | 00:57 | Unfortunately, this also means that you're shooting
with the shallowest depth of field possible.
| | 01:02 | Now at macro distances, shallow depth of
field is one of your biggest obstacles and with
| | 01:06 | the aperture open all the way,
you'll be facing extremely shallow depth.
| | 01:10 | As you'll see later in this course, there is a way
to control aperture even when the lens in reversed.
| | 01:15 | Now because the camera can't communicate with
the lens, you'll be handling all of your exposure
| | 01:19 | manually, and we'll look into how to
do that later this course.
| | 01:22 | To follow along with those lessons, you
need to understand the basics of exposure.
| | 01:26 | So if you're not comfortable using your camera
in manual mode, check out my Foundations of
| | 01:30 | Photography Exposure course.
| | 01:32 | Specifically, you need to know how to set
manual mode, how to change ISO and shutter
| | 01:36 | speed, and how to use your camera's
depth of field preview button if it has one.
| | 01:41 | If it doesn't have one, then you need to know
how to set your camera's shutter speed to bulb.
| | 01:45 | Now obviously, when the lens is off your camera,
your camera is more susceptible to sensor
| | 01:50 | dust and you want to be very careful that
you don't bump the inside of the mirror chamber
| | 01:54 | with a finger or other foreign object.
| | 01:56 | So be careful when holding the lens against the camera.
| | 02:00 | Actually if you're serious about lens reversal,
you're going to want to invest in a simple
| | 02:05 | piece of gear that will keep you from having
to hold the lens yourself and we'll look at
| | 02:08 | that piece of gear in the next movie.
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| Working with lens-reversal rings| 00:00 | In case you haven't tried it yet, I want to actually
show you some lens reversed photography here.
| | 00:06 | I have a Canon 5D Mark III with a 50 millimeter 1.8 on it.
| | 00:10 | Now you can do lens reversal with just about any lens.
It's going to be easier if you're using a smaller lens.
| | 00:16 | Shorter focal lengths give greater
magnification than longer focal lengths.
| | 00:20 | So I'm going to first take a picture with
the lens on normally as one would do.
| | 00:26 | I've got some nice flowers here.
| | 00:28 | Now the thing about this lens, it's a very,
very good lens but its minimum focusing distance
| | 00:34 | is about right here, so I'm a long way from
this flower, that's as close as I can get.
| | 00:40 | It's not really a macro shot, is it?
| | 00:42 | So what I'm going to do now is do just what
I would normally do if I was changing a lens,
| | 00:46 | I'm going to take the lens off.
| | 00:48 | But I'm going to now turn it around and
hold it back up against the camera body.
| | 00:53 | Now and you can see it's taking me
some work to get into the right place.
| | 00:57 | I want to make sure that the opening
to the body is completely closed.
| | 01:01 | But now with it reversed, I can get in real close here.
| | 01:06 | I'm shooting at ISO 1600 because it's kind of dark
in here and I want to keep my shutter speed up.
| | 01:15 | This is what I can get with the lens backwards.
This is a macro shot. I'm in very, very close.
| | 01:21 | Now this is a completely viable way of shooting macro.
| | 01:24 | You can get great work with this, but it's a little bit
of a hassle and potentially dangerous to your camera.
| | 01:30 | I've definitely got trouble holding
it against the camera all the time.
| | 01:34 | If you have smaller hands you may
not be able to do it one handed.
| | 01:36 | I need to be sure that I'm not getting any
light leaks by holding it in the wrong place.
| | 01:40 | My camera body has a little pin right here,
which makes it even harder to keep it in the
| | 01:45 | right place without it bumping around.
| | 01:47 | I am of course also exposing the sensor
chamber, so I'm at greater risk of dust.
| | 01:53 | And if I'm not careful, I could jam a
finger in there and mess up my mirror.
| | 01:57 | Fortunately, there's a way that I can actually
mount the lens unto my camera in a reversed
| | 02:01 | position. This is a reversal ring.
| | 02:07 | Let's set this down here.
| | 02:10 | It's got threads on one side, just like a
lens filter that you would attach to the end
| | 02:15 | of your lens, and on the other side it's got
the proper band at mount for your camera,
| | 02:20 | assuming you bought the right reversal ring.
| | 02:22 | So what I do is to take the threaded end
and screw it unto the front of my lens.
| | 02:28 | I mean the true front where the lens filters go.
| | 02:32 | So just as with the lens filter, I'm
being very careful to screw it in straight.
| | 02:37 | Now this thing is very skinny, if you get it on too tight,
there's not much to grab unto to unscrew it.
| | 02:42 | So I recommend not screwing it down too far,
especially if you're attaching it to another
| | 02:47 | filter on here because it could be very
difficult to unscrew this from the filter.
| | 02:51 | Now what I've got is a lens with a lens mount on both ends.
| | 02:56 | I'm going to attach the front of the lens to the camera.
| | 03:00 | It's just like attaching any regular lens.
| | 03:01 | I line up the red dots and just twist it unto my camera.
| | 03:08 | Now again I want to be very careful not to
tighten everything down too much, because
| | 03:12 | I may not be able to get the adapter off.
| | 03:14 | So now I'm ready to go.
| | 03:16 | At 20 or 30 bucks, this thing is steal.
| | 03:19 | I have nice macro lenses,
but I don't always want to carry them.
| | 03:23 | With this in my bag or in my pocket and just
some kind of lens that it fits on,
| | 03:27 | I've always got macro capability available.
| | 03:30 | Now I can shoot just like I always would, it's very easy.
| | 03:33 | I can even do something else with it.
| | 03:34 | I can wave at people while I'm shooting now
because I'm not having to hold the lens myself.
| | 03:39 | My mirror chamber is protected
and I can shoot all day this way.
| | 03:42 | When shopping for a reversal ring, I made
sure to get one that worked with my everyday
| | 03:47 | walk around lens, that is the one that I almost always carry.
| | 03:51 | So for me that's going to be maybe a 50 or a 35.
| | 03:55 | The reversal ring is so small that it fits in any bag
or any shirt pockets, so it's easy to carry.
| | 04:00 | I also tend to work with a 24-105 zoom very
regularly, so I got a reversal ring that fits that.
| | 04:07 | This is a 77 millimeter ring; I can put it on that.
| | 04:10 | Again, I'm going to have a better luck
with the shorter end of the lens.
| | 04:14 | So if I get somewhere and I see a great macro shot
someplace place where I really wasn't planning
| | 04:18 | on macro shooting, then I can just
flip my lens around and get going.
| | 04:23 | So you need to, when you're shopping for a
reversal ring, first find the thread size
| | 04:27 | of the lens that you want to reverse, that
should be marked on the end of your lens.
| | 04:30 | And of course, you want to be sure you're
buying a lens mount that's correct for your camera
| | 04:32 | because there are also reversal rings for
Nikon and Fuji and Panasonic and all the others.
| | 04:39 | This ring is a Canon mount, 58 millimeter, reversal ring.
| | 04:42 | The one I have is not actually made by Canon,
it's a third-party ring and you'll find lots
| | 04:46 | of these on Amazon, at camera stores
and so on and so forth.
| | 04:50 | So this is a very inexpensive, very easy way
to get true macro functionality
| | 04:57 | without having to buy a new lens.
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| Understanding exposure with a reversed lens| 00:00 | Normally your camera can do a lot of things
automatically including focusing and adjusting
| | 00:05 | shutter speed and aperture.
| | 00:07 | Shutter speed, ISO, white balance and
lots of other things are camera functions.
| | 00:12 | They happen in the camera, not in the lens.
| | 00:15 | But focus and aperture are parameters
that are controlled within the lens.
| | 00:20 | Your camera controls these in-lens parameters
through these electrical contacts v
| | 00:26 | on what is normally at the back of the lens.
| | 00:28 | But because we reversed the lens, the
camera has lost contact with the lens.
| | 00:31 | So when shooting reversed, you'll have no auto focus,
normally you have normal control of aperture.
| | 00:36 | However, your light meter will still work,
so you won't have to guess at exposure.
| | 00:41 | Now because you've crippled the camera's
ability to communicate with its lens,
| | 00:45 | Auto mode, Program mode and
Aperture Priority modes will not work.
| | 00:50 | Shutter priority may work fine on your camera,
but you probably won't have a usable meter in that mode.
| | 00:54 | So you're going to need to switch to manual.
| | 00:57 | When working at extremely close macro distances,
low light will be a problem.
| | 01:03 | Sometimes your lens will be shading your subject and
sometimes just the deep, dark places on your subject,
| | 01:09 | you just won't have a lot of light on them.
| | 01:11 | Also, the lens itself wasn't engineered to work reversed.
| | 01:15 | So it won't be as capable of delivering
a lot of light when it's turned around.
| | 01:19 | Right away you know that low light is going to be a problem.
| | 01:23 | With that in mind, I'm going to go ahead
and crank up my ISO to 1600.
| | 01:28 | If you don't understand why I did that, check out my
course Foundations of Photography: Night and Low Light.
| | 01:34 | Normally in Manual mode on this camera, this dial
changes shutter speed and this dial changes aperture.
| | 01:42 | But I have no aperture control now
because the camera can't talk to the lens.
| | 01:46 | In fact on the status display,
it's showing my aperture as zero-zero.
| | 01:52 | Now there is no F0 aperture, so this is just the camera's
way of saying, I don't know what's up with aperture,
| | 01:57 | you're on your own as far as that goes.
| | 02:00 | But it's saying it very politely,
so I don't really take offense at it or anything.
| | 02:04 | But what is my aperture setting?
| | 02:06 | If you've watched my Foundations of Photography:
Exposure course, then you have some experience
| | 02:11 | with the depth of field preview button, which may
or may not be located right here on your camera.
| | 02:17 | Remember, normally, the aperture
in the lens is open all the way.
| | 02:21 | This is to ensure that you have enough light
coming into the view finder
| | 02:24 | to be able to see and compose your shot.
| | 02:26 | If you've set you camera to a small aperture,
say f16, doesn't matter.
| | 02:31 | The aperture in your lens is still open all the way
so that you can see.
| | 02:35 | When you press the Shutter button, the aperture
closes down to whatever aperture setting you've chosen.
| | 02:40 | When the exposure is over, it opens
back up so that you can see it again.
| | 02:43 | Of course, all of this happens very quickly.
| | 02:45 | That's great for being able see through the view finder,
but with the lens reversed,
| | 02:49 | when we press the Shutter button, there is no way
for the camera to tell the lens to close its
| | 02:53 | aperture to any particular setting.
| | 02:55 | So for now, we are stuck with the aperture open.
| | 02:58 | That means that the only way that I can
control exposure is through shutter speed and ISO.
| | 03:04 | On most cameras, your camera's light meter
simply tells you in Manual mode whether the
| | 03:08 | things are over or under-exposed at your current setting.
| | 03:12 | So I'm giving up on Depth of Field control right now,
but I can still get an image with good overall illumination.
| | 03:18 | I'm here in Manual mode, ISO 1600, I'm going to
go ahead and frame up my shot and right now,
| | 03:24 | the meter in my camera in Manual
mode is telling me that I'm over-exposed.
| | 03:29 | Well I was doing some low light shooting earlier
and my camera is still set at a 1/6 of a second.
| | 03:34 | So it stands the reason that I'm over-exposed.
| | 03:35 | So I'm going to turn my shutter speed down.
| | 03:37 | I'm turning the knob the wrong way.
| | 03:39 | I'm going to turn my shutter speed down
until the meter says, I'm no longer over-exposed.
| | 03:44 | When I do that, I get a shutter speed of a 1/1000 of a second.
| | 03:48 | That's great, because one of the big problems
I'm going to face, shooting up close like this
| | 03:53 | is handheld camera shake.
| | 03:55 | So it's nice having that really high speed shutter.
| | 03:58 | That's what ISO 1600 is getting me.
| | 04:00 | So I can get the shot.
| | 04:03 | This looks pretty good.
| | 04:04 | The problems I'm facing in shooting macro with
any kind of lens are depth of field and auto focus.
| | 04:09 | Now I have no aperture control nor do I have auto focus.
| | 04:12 | Focus is easy though. I just moved the camera in
and out just like I would with a normal macro lens.
| | 04:19 | Usually, you're going to want to be stabilized
both to ensure sharp focus and to just have
| | 04:24 | an easier time framing your shots.
| | 04:26 | So normally I would probably be working on a tripod,
although I can do it pretty well here.
| | 04:31 | The other thing I do to improve focus
is to increase depth of field.
| | 04:34 | Now you might be thinking, well I can't
increase depth of field because to do that,
| | 04:39 | I would need aperture control.
| | 04:41 | Fortunately for the sake of your images, there
is a way that you can take control of aperture
| | 04:46 | when shooting with a reversed lens
and we're going to look at that next.
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| Gaining aperture control on a reversed lens| 00:00 | If this course is your first foray into real
macro shooting, then you might find yourself
| | 00:05 | surprised at just how shallow the
depth of field is in a macro shot.
| | 00:09 | When you are into a macro distance and your
lens is open all the way, depth of field is
| | 00:14 | often measured in fractions of a millimeter.
| | 00:16 | Now this can cause a tremendous lost of detail
across the surface of your subject especially
| | 00:22 | if your subject has any depth.
| | 00:23 | As you saw in the last movie, with the lens
reversed, the camera has lost its ability
| | 00:28 | to tell the lens to close down to a particular aperture,
which means you're stuck shooting wide open,
| | 00:33 | which means you'll have the least
depth of field possible with that lens.
| | 00:37 | Now if you're using an older lens, you
may have an actual aperture ring on the lens.
| | 00:43 | This lets you set the aperture
anywhere you want just by turning the ring.
| | 00:46 | Your meter should still work, because as the
iris is closing, the amount of light passing
| | 00:51 | through the lens is diminishing and
that's reflected in your meter reading.
| | 00:54 | You can then adjust shutter speed accordingly.
| | 00:56 | My lens doesn't have an aperture ring, though.
| | 00:59 | The aperture can only be changed
electronically by the camera.
| | 01:03 | But again, when the lens is reversed,
which it's not right now, but when it's reversed,
| | 01:08 | the camera cannot send orders to the lens.
| | 01:10 | However, there is a work around.
| | 01:13 | I have my lens on normally because this workaround
starts with the lens being attached properly.
| | 01:18 | What I want to do is set the aperture
to where I want it for my reversed shot.
| | 01:23 | So I have my camera in Aperture Priority mode.
| | 01:26 | That's really the only setting that matters right now.
| | 01:28 | It's an Aperture Priority mode and I'm
going to dial in an aperture that I want.
| | 01:32 | I'm going for deep depth of field.
| | 01:34 | So I'm going to choose a small aperture and dial in F16.
| | 01:37 | My lens is still wide open because the aperture
is not going to close down until I press that
| | 01:41 | Shutter button or until I press the
Depth of Field Preview button.
| | 01:45 | Now the Depth of Field Preview button closes the iris down.
| | 01:49 | It just happened, I heard a little sound,
but it doesn't actually take a picture.
| | 01:53 | The idea is this lets me look through the lens and
get a preview of what the depth of field might be.
| | 01:58 | It also tremendously darkens the View Finder.
| | 02:00 | So sometimes it's hard to actually see the depth of field.
| | 02:02 | But in many cases, this is really a handy feature.
| | 02:05 | We're using it for something else right now though.
| | 02:06 | I'm going to press the Depth of Field Preview button
with this finger over here.
| | 02:10 | I just heard the iris close.
| | 02:11 | Now I'm going to take the lens off and
when I do that, the iris stays closed to F16.
| | 02:19 | If you actually look into the lens, you can see
that the iris is closed down to a little small hole.
| | 02:25 | It's going to stay that way until I reattach
the lens to the camera properly.
| | 02:30 | But I'm not going to attach the lens to the camera properly.
| | 02:32 | I'm going to screw it on backwards,
because I've got my reversal ring already attached
| | 02:37 | and now I'm shooting at F16.
| | 02:38 | So my meter still works in Manual mode.
| | 02:40 | I'm switching back over the Manual mode.
I'm in ISO 1600.
| | 02:46 | Now right away, I've run into a problem.
| | 02:48 | My View Finder is really, really dark because
the aperture is closed down so far and I don't
| | 02:53 | have a tremendous amount of light
coming through my nice afternoon window here.
| | 02:57 | But I'm going to see what my meter says
if I dial my shutter speed properly.
| | 03:02 | So to get good metering, it's saying a 1/3rd of a second.
| | 03:06 | Honestly, I don't think I can handhold at a 1/3rd
of a second steadily enough to get a nice sharp image.
| | 03:12 | I'm going to bump my ISO up to 3200, but
that's only going to buy me a stop and sure enough,
| | 03:19 | that is now metering at the sixth of the second.
| | 03:22 | So I think that my hope of shooting at F16
just isn't going to happen in this situation.
| | 03:29 | So I'm going to open it back up again.
| | 03:31 | Now I have no way of opening it back up again
while the lens is attached this way, so I'm
| | 03:35 | going to detach it, put it back on normally
and when I do, I should hear, there we go,
| | 03:41 | little aperture just opened up again.
| | 03:44 | So I'm back into aperture priority.
| | 03:46 | I'm going to dial it down to F8.
| | 03:48 | Press my Depth of Field Preview button;
take the lens off and sure enough, now I have a
| | 03:53 | wider aperture than I had before, it's open
a couple of stops, so now I can put the lens
| | 03:59 | back on and see what my meter says now.
| | 04:03 | I'm still at ISO 3200, back into Manual mode
and the View Finder is definitely brighter.
| | 04:09 | Now when I meter, it's recommending
a shutter speed of a 20th of a second.
| | 04:16 | That's pretty good.
| | 04:17 | My lens isn't stabilized and I'm in real, real tight.
| | 04:20 | So that's still going to be a difficult hand holding situation.
| | 04:23 | But I'm going to go ahead and take my shot and
see what I come up with; it felt a little slow.
| | 04:30 | All right. Reviewing the image, and reviewing the image
with a histogram shows me that I've actually
| | 04:36 | got a lot of brightness in this image.
| | 04:38 | I can't really tell anything useful
about focus on the back of the camera.
| | 04:42 | I don't know if my focus was soft.
| | 04:44 | I can zoom in a little bit.
| | 04:45 | It looks pretty good actually.
| | 04:47 | That was kind of amazing to handhold that well,
at that shutter speed.
| | 04:51 | Anyway, I definitely have more depth of field.
| | 04:53 | This looks much better than when it was wide open.
| | 04:56 | But because I've got all this brightness that I don't need,
I'm going to actually underexpose the shot.
| | 05:02 | That will give me a better chance of shooting a sharp image.
| | 05:04 | So I'm going to come back in here again and I'm going
to dial my Shutter Speed to a 40th of a second.
| | 05:11 | When I do that, it shows me as under-exposed by one stop.
| | 05:15 | But I'm figuring if that's too much under-exposure,
I've got room to brighten it up in my image editor.
| | 05:19 | So I am not going to worry about that,
and it's going to greatly improve the chances
| | 05:23 | of me having a sharp image.
| | 05:27 | And actually, still that exposure looks good
at least on here and when I check the histogram,
| | 05:32 | I find that nothing is under-exposed.
| | 05:34 | My tones are on the whole a little bit
below the midpoint, below middle gray.
| | 05:39 | I can brighten that up without introducing any bad artifacts.
| | 05:43 | So very often, I think you'll find that
you're going to want to maybe underexpose a little bit
| | 05:49 | to keep your Shutter Speed up with the
idea that you'll brighten it up later in post.
| | 05:53 | If you're working in bright daylight, you
don't really have near the trouble that I'm
| | 05:56 | having here because you're going to have
enough light to keep your shutter speeds up.
| | 05:59 | But this means that I now have a true macro lens
with aperture control by doing nothing more
| | 06:05 | than attaching a reversal ring and understanding
that I can, through this kind of weird hack,
| | 06:12 | manually adjust the aperture.
| | 06:13 | It takes some practice to remember all the steps,
but this is a very efficient, very
| | 06:18 | practical way of shooting macro shots.
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| Understanding manual aperture control in bulb mode| 00:00 | If you're working with your lens reversed and
you don't have a Depth of Field Preview button
| | 00:05 | on your camera, it's still possible to manually control
the aperture as long as you have a bulb setting.
| | 00:12 | Now on my camera, Bulb is an actual mode.
It's right next to Manual mode.
| | 00:16 | I'm just going to switch over there right now.
| | 00:18 | If your camera doesn't have a dedicated Bulb mode,
it still might have a Bulb feature and
| | 00:23 | you'll find it when you go into either Manual
or Shutter Priority mode and search through
| | 00:28 | the list of shutter speeds.
| | 00:30 | At one end or the other, you might find a Bulb setting.
| | 00:33 | It'll either be called Bulb or just B.
| | 00:35 | When you're set for Bulb, as long as you
hold the Shutter button down, the shutter stays
| | 00:40 | open and the iris stays closed to your chosen setting.
| | 00:44 | When you let go, the shutter closes
and the iris opens back up.
| | 00:47 | So I'm going to dial in an aperture that I want.
| | 00:51 | I'm going to dial into F16.
| | 00:53 | No other settings matter
because I'm not really going to take a picture.
| | 00:55 | I am going to take a picture,
but it's not a picture I care about.
| | 00:58 | Now when I press the Shutter button down,
the iris is going to close, the shutter is
| | 01:02 | going to open and everything is going to
stay that way until I let go of the button.
| | 01:06 | This next bit, the coordination gets a little tricky.
| | 01:08 | I need to press the Shutter button down
while removing the lens.
| | 01:12 | You can do this however you want.
I tend to do it this way.
| | 01:14 | I'm going to press the Shutter button with
that hand and use this hand to take the lens off.
| | 01:19 | As soon as I take the lens off, the camera
closes the shutter back up, and I've now got
| | 01:24 | a dramatically over-exposed image sitting on my card.
| | 01:27 | More importantly, I now have a lens with
an aperture that's been closed down to F16.
| | 01:35 | So this is just like what happened when I was using
the Depth of Field Preview button in the last movie.
| | 01:39 | Now I can screw the lens onto my camera backwards
and I'm ready to shoot with that nice small aperture.
| | 01:45 | When I put the lens back on the camera normally,
the aperture will open back up. There we go,
| | 01:50 | I just heard it, and I can continue to shoot as
normal or within Bulb mode set another setting.
| | 01:56 | So that's a somewhat cumbersome but effective
way to set your aperture using Bulb mode
| | 02:01 | if you don't have a Depth of Field Preview button.
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| Using extension tubes with reversed lenses| 00:00 | I've got my lens reversed, I have set the aperture
on in to 5.6 using the Depth of Field Preview button
| | 00:06 | trick that I showed you earlier.
| | 00:08 | Got a new flower here.
I'm going to take a picture of it here.
| | 00:10 | I'm at ISO 1600 and this flower is much
brighter than the last one I was shooting with.
| | 00:16 | At 1600 and 56, I've got a shutter speed
of a 1/60 of a second.
| | 00:21 | And here's what I get.
| | 00:23 | The white of the flower is actually
biasing the meter a little bit.
| | 00:27 | I think I can under-expose and actually do a little bit better.
| | 00:30 | So I'm going to dial down to a 1/100 of a second and I get this.
| | 00:35 | That's a nice exposure.
| | 00:37 | This is working very well as a macro lens.
| | 00:39 | What do you do if you want to get closer?
| | 00:41 | If you've watched my macro course,
then you heard of something called Extension Tubes.
| | 00:46 | These are not optical elements.
| | 00:48 | There's nothing in here, they are just hollow tubes.
| | 00:51 | This is actually three different tubes that can be
broken apart and attached in different
| | 00:56 | combinations, so I don't have to go for full extension here.
| | 00:59 | What these do is decrease the minimum focusing
distance of my lens so that I can get the
| | 01:05 | lens closer and still be in focus.
| | 01:08 | You normally use these with a lens
that's attached properly to your camera.
| | 01:11 | There's no reason that you can't use it with
your lens reversed, because it's just a normal
| | 01:16 | camera mount, assuming you bought the right the
ones, which I have not always necessarily done.
| | 01:21 | So, I'm going to take my reversed lens off.
| | 01:24 | I'm going to put on the extension tubes.
| | 01:26 | They don't go on backwards, they go on normal.
| | 01:29 | And then, the lens attaches to the tubes
and I've now got this strange agglomeration of
| | 01:34 | things on the end of my camera.
| | 01:36 | One of the things about extension tube is
they cut a lot of light going through the
| | 01:42 | lens and into the camera, so may be that my
exposure is going to be pretty different here. Wow!
| | 01:47 | I also let you get much closer.
| | 01:49 | So what I'm going to do -- right now, the camera
is saying proper metering at F5.6 and my aperture
| | 01:56 | has stayed close to F5.6 because I have not
at any time in this process re-established
| | 02:01 | that electrical connection that would
cause the aperture to open back up.
| | 02:05 | It's saying that my current aperture at ISO 1600
good shutter speed is a 1/15 of a second.
| | 02:12 | I don't trust myself to be able to hold still
that long on an unstabilized lens that close.
| | 02:17 | And also, I've been bumping the table,
things are moving around.
| | 02:20 | So the first thing I'm going to do is
bump my ISO up to 3200.
| | 02:23 | That will get me from a 1/15 to a 1/30 of a second.
| | 02:27 | But also remember that I don't need to follow
proper exposure because that was a little bright.
| | 02:31 | I can actually under-expose by about a stop.
| | 02:34 | So I'm going to follow my meter down to one stop under
and it shows me a 1/100 of a second.
| | 02:40 | Let me hold still. This is what I get.
| | 02:45 | So look at the difference here.
| | 02:46 | Here's without the extension tubes
and this is with the extension tubes.
| | 02:50 | These things are -- they vary in price if
you buy the third-party ones like these one,
| | 02:54 | these are Kenko extension tubes.
| | 02:56 | I think they're between a $100 and $150 and they
bought me a good amount of extra magnification power.
| | 03:03 | If it's too much, I can just take some of the tubes out.
| | 03:06 | So this is a really nice way of getting some
extra power on your macro shots when you're
| | 03:10 | working with a reversed lens.
| | 03:12 | They don't take up a lot of space.
| | 03:13 | They are very light and they
really don't cost that much money.
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| Adding magnification to reversed lenses with lens couplers| 00:00 | I've changed lenses.
| | 00:02 | I've got the Canon 50mm f/1.2.
| | 00:04 | I had the 1.4 earlier.
| | 00:07 | I changed because of the filter size
and you'll see why in a little bit.
| | 00:11 | But I'm going to start by reversing it and taking a picture.
| | 00:13 | I'm in Aperture Priority.
| | 00:14 | I've dialed in to F8, hitting my Depth of Field
Preview button and taking the lens off.
| | 00:19 | This should all be old hat to you now. I have
now fixed the aperture of this lens to F8.
| | 00:22 | It's going to hold it on to the camera backwards.
| | 00:25 | Switch into Manual mode and take a shot.
| | 00:28 | I'm taking a shot because I want to show
you the difference between magnification with
| | 00:33 | this lens reversed normally, and magnification
after we do something else to it.
| | 00:41 | Okay. Here we go. That looks pretty good.
| | 00:43 | So I've taken a 50mm lens, which normally
has a normal field of view -- that is a field
| | 00:48 | of view that's roughly equivalent to the human
eye -- and I've given it this tremendous macro power.
| | 00:53 | But what if I want more macro power than that?
| | 00:55 | I want you to think about what's going
on with this lens, or any lens really.
| | 00:59 | Light is coming through the lens and it's
being bent and twisted and slowed down by
| | 01:03 | the optics in there and an image is being
projected out the back onto the image sensor
| | 01:07 | and that's the image that I'm seeing in my final picture.
| | 01:10 | What if there was a way that I could zoom in to
that image and take a crop out of the middle of it?
| | 01:16 | I would have even a closer image.
| | 01:18 | I would have even more magnification power.
| | 01:20 | All I need is some kind of optical device
that zooms in to things and makes them --
| | 01:28 | oh, I happen to have right here a
Canon 70-200 Telephoto lens.
| | 01:34 | If it was possible to get this lens reversed
onto the front of this lens, then this lens
| | 01:40 | would project a magnified image out the back and
this lens would zoom on and grab only the middle of it.
| | 01:44 | I presume by now that -- there is really no if
about this, I wouldn't be mentioning this at all
| | 01:49 | if it wasn't impossible. So let's get started.
| | 01:50 | This is a fairly simple process to do
once you've got the right equipment.
| | 01:54 | It starts by taking the 70-200
and mounting it on the camera.
| | 01:58 | I'm not going to reverse it.
| | 01:59 | I'm going to mount it normally because again, I
want the full magnification power of this lens.
| | 02:05 | With it, I'm basically taking a picture of
what's coming out at the back of that lens.
| | 02:10 | Now this lens has 77mm threads on it.
| | 02:14 | This lens has 72mm threads on it.
| | 02:17 | It turns out that all threads have a gender.
| | 02:21 | So normally, lenses have female threads on the end.
| | 02:24 | So filters that go on have male threads.
| | 02:27 | So if I had a way of doing female to female threads here,
I could attach the front of
| | 02:32 | this lens to the front of this lens.
| | 02:34 | Well, it turns out there is such a thing.
| | 02:36 | It's called a Coupler Ring,
and I happen to have one right here.
| | 02:39 | So this is basically male threads on both sides.
| | 02:43 | I looked around on Amazon.
| | 02:44 | I have two different filter sizes here.
I've got 77 and 72.
| | 02:47 | I looked around on Amazon and some other camera sites,
I could not find a 72mm coupler, but
| | 02:53 | I could find a 77mm coupler. It's fine.
I only need one or the other.
| | 02:56 | So I'm going to take this 77mm coupler ring and attach
it to the end of the lens with these 77mm threads.
| | 03:04 | This is just like screwing in a filter.
| | 03:06 | This is basically a filter with nothing in it
and the other kind of threads on the other side.
| | 03:11 | So I'm going to just screw this on.
| | 03:14 | It attaches just like any other filter.
| | 03:15 | I need to be very careful to screw it on straight
and these large filters, you've got to be
| | 03:19 | very careful with because it's easy to bend them
and screw them on crooked.
| | 03:23 | Now I'm ready to screw something else onto the front of this.
| | 03:26 | Unfortunately, this lens has the wrong filter size,
its 72 instead of 77.
| | 03:31 | So I went back to Amazon and looked
around some more and I found a Step-Up Ring.
| | 03:37 | This is a 72-77mm Step-Up Ring.
| | 03:41 | What this does is basically change
the thread size on the end of this lens.
| | 03:45 | So if I attach this here, I can now -- that's going on wrong.
| | 03:51 | If I can get this attached here,
I will be able to attach 77mm threads to it.
| | 03:57 | If this had been say a 79mm lens,
then I would need a Step-Down Ring.
| | 04:01 | I would need 79-77.
| | 04:04 | So that's on there and this is on here.
| | 04:06 | I'm ready to flip the lens over and try screwing it on here.
| | 04:11 | This is actually, as far as getting things threaded,
the easiest step because this lens is nice and heavy.
| | 04:16 | It really makes it go on pretty evenly.
| | 04:18 | I want to be careful about how far I tighten this down
because I don't want to not be able to get it off.
| | 04:24 | Otherwise, both of these lenses
will be stuck this way forever.
| | 04:27 | I also do not have any additional filters on here.
| | 04:29 | I don't have UV or Skylight filters on either lens
or polarizers or anything else.
| | 04:34 | It's best to take all those extra filters off
because it's just more things that can
| | 04:38 | be sandwiched and stuck together.
| | 04:39 | Now I have a lens with ludicrous magnification power.
| | 04:43 | There are some caveats about using it though.
| | 04:47 | Remember this lens was set to F8 or 5.6
or something ahead of time.
| | 04:51 | It's still set that way.
| | 04:53 | If you want to control the aperture of this array,
this is where you need to do it.
| | 04:57 | Your long lens that's in front needs to be set to wide open.
| | 05:01 | So I'm going to go back to Aperture Priority.
| | 05:04 | I can use Aperture Priority because I've
got all of my contacts still going between the
| | 05:08 | camera and my Telephoto lens.
| | 05:11 | I'm going to dial it down to 2.8.
| | 05:13 | That's as wide as it will go.
| | 05:15 | I've still got this set at F5.6, so I'm
going to have some decent depth of field.
| | 05:19 | The problem I'm going to have here -- I've
also actually got auto focus if I want it,
| | 05:22 | but I'm not going to use that.
| | 05:24 | I'm going to just focus the way I normally would.
| | 05:26 | The problem I'm having here is that it's
going to be really hard to hold this stable.
| | 05:32 | So it's a little slow. Let me bump up my ISO.
| | 05:40 | It's on a 2.8 and I'm ready to go here. So here's my shot.
| | 05:47 | As you can see, I am in much closer
than I was when I had only the reversed 50.
| | 05:52 | You can also see that this lens is going to have to be cropped.
| | 05:54 | It's got that bad vignetting around
it there's nothing I can do about that.
| | 05:58 | Still, this is a 23 megapixel camera.
| | 06:00 | I can crop a lot and still have a very sizable image.
| | 06:05 | If it's not sizable enough, if I want to get an even closer,
I could add some extension tubes.
| | 06:09 | Just like I did before I'd stick some extension tubes.
| | 06:11 | They would go right here between
the camera and the Telephoto lens.
| | 06:15 | So this is a way to get a lot more magnification power.
| | 06:20 | I would not run out and buy this configuration
of lenses with the idea that then I'm going
| | 06:24 | to go macro shooting.
| | 06:25 | There are great lenses but if you're really
serious about macro shooting, go get a macro lens.
| | 06:29 | If you do have some lenses and want to put
them together in a configuration like this,
| | 06:34 | you heard my thought process for how I figured out the rings.
| | 06:36 | You need a coupler ring for one of the lenses and
then the appropriate Step-Up or Step-Down Rings.
| | 06:41 | The way you put them together is you need a
long lens attached to the camera and a shorter
| | 06:45 | lens that's reversed.
| | 06:46 | It doesn't have to be a zoom.
| | 06:48 | It just needs to be a fairly long lens like a 200
like this and then a 50 or shorter
| | 06:52 | to go reversed on the front of it.
| | 06:55 | So if you've already got some of these, it
doesn't take that much space to carry a couple
| | 06:59 | of extra rings, they don't weigh anything.
| | 07:01 | And in a pinch, they can give you
a tremendous amount of macro power.
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