DIY Macro Photography Part 2 of 2

The How To Part:

Today I'm going to show you how I got from tiny spec on ballpoint pen to surprisingly fierce tiny spider. That is the same spider I promise.

So how did we get there. I used two lenses together, the first a telephoto zoom lens (70-300mm) and a 50mm turned around backwards and attached to the front of the telephoto. The Image bellow show what that looks like (kinda goofy and yes there are rubber bands involved).

To get this to work at home you are going to need to first choose the lens you mount on your camera. The longer the focal length on this lens will determine the amount of magnification you get. I feel like somewhere around 70mm is a good place to start. A 300mm lens feels like

a microscope, but can make you want to pull your hair out as the depth of field is about as thick as a hair. Next we need to break out that 50mm lens your friend kept telling you to buy. If you don't have a 50mm lens what we really want is a fast lens (large maximum aperture 1.4-2.8ish). Now we need to flip that sucker around and figure out a way to mount that on the end of the telephoto. I used a ton of rubber bands on the inside of of my telephotos's lens hood to keep my second lens in place. This is where you are going to have to get a bit creative, because the size and shape of your lenses are going to most likely be different than mine. Fancy adapter rings area available online so you can try and hunt one of those down if your too cool for twine and Popsicle sticks. The last step is to make sure that the aperture of your second lens stays fully open. On older lenses you can simply turn the aperture ring to the select your widest aperture, but on newer lenses more rubber bands come into play. In the photo to the right you can see how I wrapped a light rubber band around the pin that the camera uses to control the lenses aperture. Once you have gotten your lenses kissing its time to try shooting some frames and see what you get. If you are having any problems or have questions drop me a line or comment bellow.

Whitman