Dptips :. Digital Photography Tips, Tricks, and Techniques

The Canon A-series camera is perfect for taking macro shots. With a relatively cheap setup (under $100), the A-series camera will be ready to handle some truly amazing close-ups. Please feel free to ask specific questions as I have used an A85 with a reverse lens for quite some time. Best, Ivan

Essentially here is what you need for a Macro setup:
Note: all A series cameras can use a similar setup. The only thing different amongst the A60,70,80,90s is the filter adaptor you need to purchase. This will also work with other P&S cameras with front lens threads.

-52mm Filter Adaptor (for A-series)
-Reverse Ring Coupler with 52mm to whatever size your lens is threaded
-A 50mm SLR lens with an aperature of 1.8 or larger such as 1.4 (if
you are using a Canon FD 50mm you will need a special cutout rear cap
to keep the aperture open, just let me know if you need help with that)
- I highly recommend a basic slave flash with flash bracket as much light is lost with the addition of the reverse lens.

Some pics of the setup and a sample shot:

Setup

Sample Shot

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The How-to and Pictures that insprired my fascination with Reverse Lens on my A85:

http://megaweb.clubsnap.org/articles/a70_reversed_35mmf2/

Other Useful Links:
http://members.cox.net/mannyfresh/equipment/

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1010&message=12423356

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Notes from forum posts:

For anyone interested in using a reverse mounted 35mm camera lens to do macro photography on a Canon A series camera with the optional 52mm Canon filter adapter, http://www.thecamerahunter.com has male 52mm to male 55mm (and many other sizes) available for ~$15. You can also check Bhphotovideo.com and search for "Macro Coupler".

The 52-55 I bought from them is a nice thin metal coupler that minimizes the distance from adapter to lens, which can be important to avoid vingnetting. I had excellent results using a Minolta 50mm f1.7. On the other hand, my 28mm had severe vignetting (but gave ~2x magnification over the 50mm). I found that even leaving the UV filter on the 50mm lens caused a little vignetting…so you really don’t want to stack up filter adapters.

With the 50mm lens, there was about a 3x increase in magnification over the A80’s lens. So you can fill the screen with an 18mm wide subject!

A lucky bonus: Since the adapter and lens block so much of the light from the flash, I was surprised to find that flash exposures were actually pretty good.