[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW0cFk9d-P0]
[Lozzless] has a steady hand and plenty of confidence in his hacking skills. The video above is worth watching for the full eight minutes. In it you’ll see him convert a lens into what he calls a SuperMacro lens with a working aperture. The process involves fashioning a connector ring from a lens cap, modifying an Electro-focus lens mount, and assembling the parts to do his bidding. We don’t have the photography background to fully understand what he’s doing here, but we can appreciate the process, and the results are shown at the end of the clip.
[Thanks TommyC]
epic win.
Not bad at all… I did something like it with my Ricoh TLS401 by mounting two lenses face to face. Though eveything was full manual then, no soldering, no autofocus.
wonderfully made video
That was amazing work, very well put together idea!
Apature is work!
Really good video. Modifying a lens looks really scary.
Excellent video! Great quality shots! I do not understand the entire proces, but was never bored troughout the entire video.
@Lozzless: Thank you for putting music from Sony Music Entertainment in this video -.-
sooo, lets see a macro picture of a ruler or something
makes a whole video about making it then never shows results
Beautiful video.
@The Steven,
The connections are for the aperture, not the autofocus. I doubt that the autofocus would work with this mod – although it’s connected electrically, the camera will get confused as the focusing now has to be done in a completely different way.
I’ve used this lens before (the cheapy Canon 18-55 kit lens) in reverse for ultra-macro. You can simply hold it against the camera, but it’s quite difficult to get a sharp picture and you have to do the metering manually. A sort of half-way house between that and this lovely mod are the reversing mounts you can buy on eBay for a few pounds. They’re basically a filter thread glued to a bayonet mount…but of course you’ll have to set the aperture manually before reversing the lens.
Sony Music Entertainment for me too :(
@lozzless
Ditto. Too bad musical frills have to lead to
any actual content getting “lozz”ed and not
arriving at non-US locations. US expat
Nice skills but I don’t like the black tape…
You can obtain the same results by adjusting the aperture to F11, disconnecting the lens, holding it with the hand (or use a reversing ring) and taking the picture! No wires, no hacksaw, no lenses broken.
I’ve used this method, also extension rings and lens-in-front-of-lens, but nothing compares to a real macro lens. The most important thing is that you lose infinity-focus and that if focuses only on a spot, not a plane like a macro.
Buy a second-hand one if you can’t afford new and you’ll see the difference.
YouTube is shit. Stop using it. Seriously.
Especially when the same is already on Vimeo (a decent video site): http://vimeo.com/9965886
smart … despite the fact he is using a canon X3
That was a well composed video. It would be nice to see a few pictures taken with the lens.
The step I don’t understand is why he had to remove the AF mechanism.
A much smarter hack would have been to create two adapter rings connected together with wiring. The first ring is a reversing ring with connectors built into it. The second ring would be an extension tube with connectors also built into it. This way you could reverse any lens you want without damaging it and still having aperture control. You could make the reversing ring side fit any lens with inexpensive step down or step up rings.
There’s a slightly better way of doing this if you dont want to potentially destroy a lens (even a cheapo stock lens like he was using). Get yourself a macro extension tube which has the EF electrical contacts passed through (this is the most expensive piece), solder on some wires, get a EF to 58mm adapter and, hack up a back lens cap in order pass through the contacts from the extension tube up to the back the lens. Now… mount as so: Camera -> hacked extension tube -> EF to 58mm adapter -> lens mounted backward -> hacked back cover with contacts. Yes.. its more complicated, but it also means you can disassemble it and still use the lens in its stock form, and you can use different length lenses as well (though you might need a different adapter ring than 58mm).
it’s nice to see that the ef-s 18-55 has a use.
totally digging that and my soldering iron out and trying the hack.
This Fu**ing Guys from Sony/BMG have stopped this Video on UTube for germany!
I hate all this things that happend the last few years, I also can’t hear many Radiostations in the U.S. cause I lived outside and could be a dangerous motherfu**ing Jihad guy….oh goodness! Kisses to the Homesecurity’s. Restricted Internet is still alive and kills the freedom of speech and democracy.
This video contains content from Sony Music Entertainment. It is no longer available in your country.
A big fat THX to sony and Lozzless.
“this video contains content from sony music entertainment. it is no longer available in your country.”
Any lens with an aperture ring, combined with a reversing ring (~$10-15) will do the same, and might even meter on certain cameras.
The challenge comes from lenses that have been ‘gelded’ (The letter G is used in nikon terminology to indicate lenses without aperture rings, which are useless on older manual-focus cameras). These cameras default to the smallest possible aperture setting, and when the lens is reversed, this makes metering tricky. I’ve obtained decent results simply by holding the aperture open with my other hand.
Sweet video! but why didn’t release the connector locks when pulling them out?
I was rapt by the content of your task.
I was blown away by the camera work, editing and music.
Total WIN, dude.
This is neat and all, but you can get the same end result with a cheap set of camera bellows. I got mine on eBay for about $12, and I can put any of my EF/EF-S lenses on it. I don’t know what kind of magnification he’s getting with this hack, but I can fill the entire frame with a penny using my bellows and the 17-85mm IS. When I put the 70-200mm f2.8 on the bellows, I have a razor-thin depth of field, but I can literally count the hairs on a fly’s back.
Cool hack, but totally unnecessary.
I must say, that is the best cinematography for a instructional video.
@zool: http://www.youtube.com/user/lozzless
Youtube sucks, they block 90% of the videos which have some music in it, because they can’t agree with sony (at least in my contry).
@Whoever: thanks for the vimeo link.
@Patrick: the point is that he still has aperture control so he can increase the depth of field.
This looks fun to try – it might not be high-tech but it’s got the potential to be useful.
This guy has some great editing skills.
Superb video. It’s too bad i don’t have any spare lenses to mod. This seems like a fun hack.
@zool I’m not entirely sure, but wasnt the entire video shot by such a SuperMacro lens?
Could you please change the embed to Vimeo so the rest of the world can enjoy it too?
http://vimeo.com/9965886
Thanks.
The hack alone is incredible.
The video? Jaw-droppingly awesome in a way that makes me want to just back out of the guy’s way.
He knows what he’s doin’.
@Bramswune
I was refering to camera technology, not lens automation. I came up in the world of film, using 35mm, 2 1/4, 6×4.5, and 4×5. I use to bulk-load and process my film the “old way” in chemicals. I printed my own work in a darkroom, and I’ve probably forgotten more using Microdol-X 3:1 than most kids know about their digital cameras.
I think some people don’t understand the point of this vid. He did it because he could, not because he was looking for an easy wway to take macro shots.
if you ask me what youtube have allowed (the taking down of videos with “copyrighted” audio content) is censorship by stealth.
Viva la Revolution!
only about 60% irreversible work and that is primarily only done on the section with the electronics. About 25..50% actual electronics work (well setting up the right length wires, soldering so as to not destroy stuff, that kind of thing.. The resulting image looked great: the question is whether or not he actually got things PRECISELY aligned along the center of the circular axis: if he has, then this is a d*mned nice mod. I hate cameras that don’t let you hack at all & their “so called” close focusing basically simply doesn’t work.
What video camera did he use to record this?
NASTY soldering iron. Does he even know what flux is?
Why is he just forcing those tiny ribbon cables out of those connectors? Wouldn’t it be easyer to just unhook those connectors and then pull the ribbons out?
“… aperture is work!”
Fascinating Video!
Somebody send him some vowels for his surname. The lousy commies have left a legacy of massive pollution, degrading poverty, and no vowels for the poor.
He does have results…in video form.
http://vimeo.com/9402188
Great VID, very good hack!
” aperture science .. we do what we must because we can”
Please tell this guy how those FFC connectors work – i wouldn’t take out the cables without releasing the latch first…. Other that that, great video.
I agreed with the remark about using bellows until I followed the link to this guy’s work on vimeo. It turns out that he needs AF and zoom capability because he shoots video.
THe most amazing video compiled to show us geeks everywhere how to do something.
Try this.
http://www.novoflex.com/en/products/macro-accessories/reverse-adapter-eos-retro/