A little experiment

minicoop1985 · Nov 23, 2013

Saw something online that inspired this. I literally rubber banded the 58mm f/1.4 Minolta Rokkor MC lens from my SRT-101 backwards onto my Olympus E-450 to see what on earth would happen-also had to use my 40-150 to get the other lens to stay put, then threw the combo on my tripod. Here's the results.

PB222313 by longm1985, on Flickr

PB222307 by longm1985, on Flickr

PB222306 by longm1985, on Flickr

PB222305 by longm1985, on Flickr

So here's what happened: Changing the focus on the Minolta lens made no discernible difference. Focus distance was about 2" in front of the lens-if that. INCREDIBLY thin DOF at times-note the anthers being in and out of focus. The Oly's autofocus seemed to function just as horribly as it usually does, but did actually work. Holy cow is this thing hard to get just still enough too-the SLIGHTEST motion and it's blurred beyond being useable. Glad to have a remote for that purpose. Does distort the edges and create a vignette. Definitely an interesting result, if you ask very biased me.

tirediron · Nov 23, 2013

Nice!

WesternGuy · Nov 23, 2013

Nice shots. Definitely some potential in this experiment.

WesternGuy

crimbfighter · Nov 23, 2013

I really like the effect! It feels like I'm watching images from someone elses dreams. Almost as though this is what it would look like if we could record memories and play them back on the computer screen. Neat!

minicoop1985 · Nov 23, 2013

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I'll definitely be trying this again and trying to figure out a better way to mount it up besides rubber bands... And yeah, now that you mention it, Crimbfighter, they do have a rather dream like effect, don't they?

limr · Nov 23, 2013

Reversed lenses can be very interesting. I can't remember - do you have a Brownie in your collection? If you've got more than one, choose the one you're less interested in, open it up and reverse the lens. Then put a roll of film through it.

https://www.google.com/search?q=rev..._I_TMsQSm7YGQCA&ved=0CEYQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=487

Love the second and fourth shots!

cconner · Nov 23, 2013

You can purchase a reversed lens adapter that mounts like a filter then to the body.

Amazon:

Macro Reversed Ring Camera Mount Adapter

minicoop1985 · Nov 23, 2013

Actually, Leonore, I don't have a Brownie in my collection that I'm aware of... These things change fairly frequently, so there might be for all I know. :lol:

Thanks, btw. If a Brownie ever does find its way into my collection, I'll be giving this a shot.

I should have been a bit more clear too-I'm using a reversed lens rubber banded to a standard Olympus autofocus zoom lens mounted to my camera. So it's two lenses and god knows how many lens elements combined. I'm not mounting the reversed lens directly to the body. I'll take a photo of my VERY urban engineered setup when I get back home tomorrow or Monday. Are there any thread adapters that do 58mm inside thread to 55mm inside thread? Thread them lens to lens? Then I could at least not worry about smashing the Minolta lens quite as much...

minicoop1985 · Nov 23, 2013

Here's the article that inspired this experiment, by the way:

Snowflakes, night city and other things: My technique for snowflakes shooting

I'm sure it's been posted in the interesting articles section, but it pertains to and inspired the cause of this thread, so I figure it's appropriate.