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Update
To all my loyal blog readers: long time, no blog! I'm not dead or in jail, I've simply been busy shooting, in fact I spent a week outside the US shooting a national TV talk show special in the Caribbean. Shucks. After that I was in New York for a while, and now I'm finally back home with enough time to write my latest blog entry. Normally I type up in depth tutorials for complex and challenging commercial photos, but this week I'm adding something new to the mix which I'm sure you'll love: tech tips. Who doesn't love a good old fashioned tip? I know I love them, and I'm sure you'll love my pension for details. Without further ado...
1 Lens + 2 Accessories = 3 Lenses
I recently stumbled onto two accessories that, when combined with a Nikon 50mm lens, will seriously turn your lens into the optical equivalent of a Swiss Army knife. Imagine having the ability to take a very popular lens and quickly turn it into not one, but two macro lenses of various magnifications... If that sounds cool to you, then today's you're lucky day!
The Nikon BR2A and BR3
To turn your 50mm lens into a "Swiss Army Lens", you will need to buy two accessories, the Nikon BR2A and BR3. The Nikon BR2A is a ring for reverse mounting a 50mm Nikon lens. You read that right, this ring, which is pictured below, is used to mount a 50mm prime lens backwards. More on this later... The BR2A "reversing ring" can be had online for about $40.00 at most online dealers. If your not scared away by nameless third party Chinese manufacturers, you can lower the cost of this part to around $15.00 from online dealers. For all you Canon shooters out there, you too can find this type of reversing ring as well. As far as my research shows, only third parties make the Canon ring.
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BR2A filter, F-Mount showing.
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BR2A filter, filter screw showing.
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The Nikon BR3 appears to be a far less known accessory than the BR2A. This accessory allows you to mount 52mm filters in front of an f-mount lenses rear lens element. This allows you to protect your rear lens element and use other creative filters on your lens when its rear mounted with the BR2A. The BR3, which is pictured below, can be bought online for about $40.00 at most dealers. If you want a cheap Chinese knock off, sorry to bust your bubble, there appears to be none. Unfortunately for Canon users, there also seems to be NO such accessory made for your lenses, Canon or Chinese made, period. If anyone can find one or knows of one, please leave a comment in the comment section below!
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BR3, F-Mount showing.
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BR3, filter screw showing.
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Turning 1 Lens Into 3
Obviously, the first lens setup is using your lens normally, the other two setups require the usage of the BR3 and BR2A. To turn the lens into a 1:1 macro lens, simply screw the BR2A onto the front of your lens, and mount the BR3 onto its bayonet end (along with any filter you have), then mount it to the camera. What you wind up with is pictured below - a reverse mounted lens. Reverse mounting the lens allows you to focus extremely close to the camera. This is essentially "poor mans macro" - and it works great!
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Nikon 50mm lens in reverse setup.
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The third lens setup is technically an extension tube setup hack of sorts. I was looking at my the BR2A and BR3 and noticed that they could both connect to each other in two ways, on of which effectively creates an extension tube. Simply screw both filter sides together and viola! Macro extension tube. Mount the lens into the BR3 side, and mount the BR2A side into the camera and your set. This setup is pictured below. If it isn't already obvious, this coupled setup can be used with any lens to make it focus closer to the lens.
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BR3 and BR2A coupled.
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Nikon 50mm lens in extension setup.
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Performance: Reverse Mount Setup
Field of View & Magnification
The reverse mount setup of a 50mm lens on a full frame camera appears to produce very close to, if not, 1:1 magnification. I verified this by photographing a measured grid, which is pictured below. Each square is 1/4 inch long and high.Total field of view is 1 x 1 1/2 inches.
Reverse mounted field of view, about the size of a 35mm film negative or postage stamp.
Pin Cushion Focus Issues, Distortion, and Lateral Chromatic Aberration
This setup does produce some pin cushion focusing issues. For those who don't know what that is... Its basically focus that forms a "pin cushion" like appearance, you can focus in the center of the image, or the sides, but not both. Pin cushion focus sucks, but, it can be minimized dramatically by shooting at deep f/stops. Another issue you will notice is distortion, the reverse setup causes the image to "dip" in at the center like a bowl, with "high" looking outer edges. Another problem which you might encounter, depending on what you photograph, is lateral chromatic aberrations, which is basically a miss alignment of various colors of light being projected onto the sensor. Like many lenses, it is not free of this issue, and it does become worse on the edges of the frame. I've provided below, a series of images showing how the reverse setup performs at various f/stops. You can click on the images to look at full res copies of the images.
The reverse setup's distortion really isn't too bad, and it can be easily corrected in Photoshop. Feel free to download a high res grid image to create a default correction setting if you wish!
Depth of Field and Focusing Distance
To say the least, the focusing distance of the reverse setup is not exactly far away from the lens, its 3 3/4 inches, and all focusing must be done by moving the camera back and forth. Because of the 50mm lenses design, the focusing ring does absolutely nothing to change the lenses optics when its reverse mounted, so don't worry about it! The depth of field (DOF) is extremely narrow, even when shooting at f/16. Pictured below are examples of DOF at various f/stops. Again, each square is a 1/4 inch wide and deep.
Exposure Loss
Right out of the gate, the act of reversing mounting your lens will cost you 2 stops of light. In reality, because of focusing and shutter speed issues, you're probably gonna loose far more than that since you'll most likely wind up needing to shoot at f/16 with a fairly high shutter speed. Needless to say, this is NOT a low light friendly setup! Unless your shooting outside on a bright sunny day, you will need to use some fairly powerful lighting equipment.
Tips
Based on my own personal experiences, I recommend the following tips:
- The best f/stops to work at are f/8, f/11, and f/16. Anything under that and you can still get "focused" images, but your sharpest point of focus does get progressively softer (this is a longitudinal chromatic aberration issue).
- Use a fast shutter speed. The higher your magnification, the more you will magnify the appearance of movement in the lenses field of view, and it will make motion blurring more problematic. Consider using a tripod.
- If you can afford to do this, I highly recommend always framing your subject matter in the middle of the frame, and then recomposing the shot in post via cropping. Yes, you'll be loosing resolution, but keep in mind that the center of the frame is where you'll find the sharpest focus as well as the least amount of distortion, especially at shallower f/stops.
- Compose and focus with your f/stop at f/1.4, then stop it down. This will help you avoid making a lot of mistakes due to poor visibility at deep f/stops.
- If you have live view on your camera, USE IT! Live view is extremely helpful when focusing, especially at deeper f/stops.
- Consider using focusing rails if you can afford them.
Performance: Extension Mount Setup
Field of View & Magnification
The extension mount setup of a 50mm lens on a full frame camera produces not only less magnification than the reverse mount setup, but varying degrees of magnification since the focusing ability of the lens is preserved. I verified this by photographing measured grids, which are pictured below. Each square is 1/4 inch long and high.The total field of view for the closest focus is 2 x 2 3/4 inches, and 2 1/2 x 3 3/4 inches for the infinity (furthest) focusing distance.
Extension mounted field of view, closest focusing distance.
Extension mounted field of view, infinity focusing distance.
Pin Cushion Focus Issues, Distortion, and Lateral Chromatic Aberration
Just like the reverse mount setup, the extension mount setup also has pin cushion focus and distortion issues as well, but the distortion is in the opposite direction. If you look at my test images below, you'll see that this setup makes the images center bulge toward the camera while the outer edges bend away. Personally, I think the distortion is more evident when using the lens at its closest focusing distance. Lateral chromatic aberration is most evident in the outer edges of the frame across all focusing distances. Pictured below are test shots at various f/stops. I tested the closest and infinity focusing distances.
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F/1.4 close focus.
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F/4 close focus.
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F/16 close focus.
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F/1.4 infinity focus.
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F/4 infinity focus.
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F/16 infinity focus.
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Depth of Field and Focusing Distance
Since the extension mount setup allows the focusing ring to still operate, you have more flexibility with focusing. You're range of focus is roughly 1 1/2 inches when using the focusing ring. Closest focus is 4 inches from the lens, and your furthest focus is 5 1/2 inches from the lens. Below are test shots of a measured grid at various f/stops, shot using both the closest and infinity focusing distances. Each square is a 1/4 inch wide and deep.
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F/1.4 DOF close focus.
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F/4 DOF close focus.
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F/16 close focus.
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F/1.4 DOF infinity focus.
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F/4 DOF infinity focus.
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F/16 DOF infinity focus.
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Exposure Loss
Adding the extension tube will cost you 1 stop of light; however, just like the reverse mount setup, you'll probably loose more than that. Extremely shallow dept of field and shutter speed issues are the main reasons for losing more light. Lighting equipment is, again, highly recommended!
Tips
Based on my own personal experiences, I recommend the following tips:
- The best f/stops to work at are f/8, f/11, and f/16. Anything under that and you can still get "focused" images, but your sharpest point of focus does get progressively softer (this is a longitudinal chromatic aberration issue).
- Use a fast shutter speed. The higher your magnification, the more you will magnify the appearance of movement in the lenses field of view, and it will make motion blurring more problematic. Consider using a tripod.
- Compose and focus with your f/stop at f/1.4, then stop it down. This will help you avoid making a lot of mistakes due to poor visibility at deep f/stops.
- If you have live view on your camera, USE IT! Live view is extremely helpful when focusing, especially at deeper f/stops.
- Consider using focusing rails if you can afford them.
Wrap Up
I hope you found this tech tip useful! Pictured below are some samples of my own work shot using my 50mm lens in both macro setups. The grass picture was shot using the lens in extension mount setup, and the bubbles in reverse mount setup.
I hope you enjoyed this weeks post! Pleas feel free to comment below and interact with me. Are you an Art Director or Creative Director? Check out my other work available for direct licensing. If you have an account at a major stock photo agency, you can surf on over to my portfolio via this page. If you are in need of a photographer for a commercial assignment, contact me here. 
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Chris Nuzzaco | 
Reader Comments (6)
Well done. Very good information for the photographer on a budget!
Lovely post, Nikon rules ;)
Thanks guys! I too am a fan of low budget solutions. Is this the ideal macro setup? No, but its a nice little trick to keep in your bag!
There IS a Canon solution, but mine doesn't involve EF/EF-S lenses. I stack, moving outward from a T1i body, an FD-mount lens to EOS-mount body adapter, an FD-mount reverse mounting adapter (55mm in my case), a 55-52 step-up ring, and an old FD-mount 50mm f/1.8 with a 52mm filter thread, then a second FD-mount reverse mount to allow manually stopping down the lens... It's pretty ghetto, but it works. (I was on a budget when I came up with this, and had most of the parts--the extra reverse mount and FD-EOS adapter only ran about $65 combined. Very cheap in comparison to even a used macro lens.)
The same FD lens can also be used right-way-around with only the FD-EOS adapter, which functions as an extension tube this way as well.
If you don't have old Canon FD lenses lying around, you may be able to do something similar with another Chinese ???-EOS adapter and reverse-mount to match. You may reach macro sizes with such a setup and a close-up filter, as well.
Don't negate the value of a close-up filter, especially if you're already going to be planning on a crop--a 50mm prime designed for 35mm will cast a much wider image on an APS-C sized sensor, and even with the addition of a close-up filter, you can still end up with at least a 3000x2000-pixel crop on anything released after the Rebel XT. I can get nearly full-resolution crops from the T1i with the ghetto setup with no noticeable quality loss, at least 4000px on the long side compared to its max of 4752 for fine JPG.
Chris: Hello from Egypt! Great post. I think I know what I want for Christmas now.
There a lot of really good and affordable 50mm lenses out there, it really just comes down to which brand your prefer. They are all quite good.