How to get macro results for less than $20.

I know what you may be thinking. There's no way you can get good macro results for that price. Technically, you're right but if you hunt for some bargains, I'm sure you can do it and stay within that budget - plus or minus a few dollars. I'm assuming if you're reading this article that you already have a film or digital camera of some sort, and beyond that the only other major component is a manual lens.

The lens I used for this project is a Pentax 50mm lens, but you could also use any manual Minolta, Canon, or Nikon lens of similar focal length. With the popularity of auto-focus lenses these days, no one really wants them anymore, so you can get them on ebay or at the local flea market cheaply. The only requirement is that the aperture blades close when you rotate the aperture ring while the lens is off the camera body. You'll need that ability so you can set a small aperture without having to have any electrical or mechanical connection to a camera body.

Note that the photos appear somewhat blown out because it's difficult to photograph blacks and show details in the black areas. If it really bothers you, adjust your monitor by lowering the brightness. Thanks.

The first thing you'll need to do is get together some materials. Of primary importance is a spare body cap for your camera of choice. For me, I needed a Canon EOS body cap which I was able to purchase at the local camera shop for $5. Beyond that, you'll need some kind of accessory that screws into the front threads of the 50mm lens. In my case, the lens front thread diameter was 49mm. Some digging through a box of assorted screw in filters at the same camera shop landed me a 49mm collapsible rubber lens hood for $2 - a real bargain. You could use a step-up ring, or a filter with the glass/filter element removed as well. The only purpose this piece serves is to help reverse mount the lens, so almost anything with a 49mm thread would have worked. The photo below shows the hood after I carefully removed the rubber with a hobby razor. I didn't pay the sticker price because it was in the bargain bin.

To get started, I needed a way to remove the center portion of plastic body cap. After toying with some ideas, I got an idea from the days when I used to work in the factory of a major US plastics manufacturer. I found a spice can laying around the house that I bought from Target a couple of years ago. The neck of the can just fit inside the body mount flange. I put a layer of aluminum foil in the center of the kitchen stove to protect the top surface and then put the body cap on top of the foil with the body flange pointing upwards. Wearing a welding glove, I used a burner on the stove to heat the lip of the can so it could melt through the plastic. The trick is to get the can hot enough to melt the plastic without burning it. If your kitchen really starts to stink, you've burned the plastic and the can is too hot. I just heated it for a few moments, set the lip of the can inside the mounting flange and pushed down with constant force for a minute or so. I had to reheat the can a couple of times to get all the way through. Once cut, it's important to check and see that the cap still fits your camera since the heat may warp the mount if the can is too hot.

Next, you'll need to glue the body cap to the lens hood piece or filter or whatever you came up with that screws into the front of the 50mm lens. What we're trying to achieve is getting the 50mm lens mounted in the reverse position from normal. The lens usually takes something big and reproduces the image on a very small area. For our project, we're trying to make the film/sensor represent the 'something big' while the subject is many times smaller. If you don't get what I'm talking about, you will see soon enough what the results are.

So the first step is to rough-up the areas to be glued. This will create more surface area for the glue to stick to as well as remove any loose paint that may allow the pieces to come apart later. I used a grinding wheel dresser for a dremel tool for this, but any course sand paper or emery cloth would do. I recommend doing this by hand rather than using power tools since you don't want to remove much material - just get a rough surface. Beyond that, you'll want to clean any oil residue from your fingers off with some alcohol.

As for the choice of glues to use, I'm a big fan of JB Weld 2 part epoxy. It does take a while to cure, but the resulting glue joint is very strong. The last thing you want is for your macro lens to suddenly drop off the front of the camera because the glue didn't hold. Use whatever you like, but definately choose the strongest stuff you can find. Below are the pictures of the glue-up. I was wearing latex/nitrile gloves for this so cleanup was easier and I used a toothpick to mix and apply the epoxy. The final image shows how I left the parts to cure. I used a spring clamp to put pressure on the two parts so there wouldn't be any gaps between them that could leak light. When you do this, make sure you orient the parts so the threaded part and the body cap flange/bayonet are facing outward.

Wait 24 hours for the epoxy glue to set up completely. After that, you can assemble your franken-camera:

Below is a couple of test shots. The only thing I did was set the aperture to f/16 so I would have some depth-of-field to work with. I let the camera's built in exposure meter figure out how long to keep the shutter open. If your camera doesn't have the ability to automatically meter the scene or if it can't automatically calculate a long exposure, you'll have to do some experimenting to determine the proper exposure. You may be able to approximate the aperture using the scale on the lens, but it probably won't be completely accurate because the distance between the aperture and the sensor/film plane is different than it would be when the lens is used normally. If I recall, these exposures are around 4 seconds with the iso sensitivity set at 400. A full-res image from the 20D would allow me to make a very sharp 8x10 or a somewhat sharp 11x14 inch print from these:

That last image is a beercap. Here's a pixel-for-pixel crop from image without applying any sharpening effects to the image:

One problem with this solution is you lose the ability to focus the camera automatically. In fact, the only way you can focus at all is to move the camera physically either closer or further away from the subject. Complicating matters further is the fact that your viewfinder will be a bit dimmer than normal making critical focus harder to see. Still, that's not too bad for less than a $20 investment.

Well, I hope this has inspired you to attempt a project like this. With a set of Canon EF extension tubes, I can get even closer to my subject and increase the magnification. Just remember that the longer the extension tube is, the less light you'll have to work with when focusing. What's worse is that you'll have even less depth-of-field.

 

I would like to acknowledge that the idea for this project came from another enthusiast at photocritic.org: Macro Photography on a budget I wanted to try doing the project myself, but thought I might try a slightly modified approach. The above is the result of what I came up with as a result of reading the article at the photocritic site.