• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Macro conversion (1 Viewer)

Jungle

Active member
Hi all,

I have been seriously considering getting a macro lens for my nikon d7100, but have found recently that there is an attachment called a Raynox dcr 150 or 250 that would go onto the end of my current lens and work well for this purpose, incidentally my current lenses are nikon 35mm f1.8 dx and tamron 70-300 vc.

Does anyone have any experience with the Raynox lenses, especially using a setup similar to mine?

Many Thanks,
George.
 
I've used raynox in the past and found them to be poor quality,have a look out for a tamron 90mm 2.8 macro.They can be picked up fairly cheap used.

Cheers.

Steve.
 
Not got one but they look good value for money at £45 for the 150 on Amazon and published results look good. Having used something similar in the long past, they tend to be better on longer focal lengths than shorter and the optical design of the lens can have similar implications, the most common problem, from memory, being vignetting on shorter focal lengths or small apertures on certain lenses, and my ability to keep everything steady.

If you Google 'raynox dcr-150 tamron 70-300' without the quotes, you will find a lot of people who have tried a similarish set up.

In the end I took the route of dedicated macro lenses, but they tend to cost somewhat more. (I just love the in camera focus stacking on the E-M1)

This article seems to be written by someone who seems to like them, though my experiences of stacking multiple attachments on the front of a lens are less positive than his.

http://extreme-macro.co.uk/raynox-adapter-techniques/
 
Last edited:
Dedicated macrto lens are fine when you can control all the aspects of the shoot. When you are chasing an insect up and down a blade of grass in a breeze. Its all down to technique.

Some raynox images:
 

Attachments

  • 1392928375_8012a8018b_o.jpg
    1392928375_8012a8018b_o.jpg
    179 KB · Views: 132
  • 1387316317_88b71cd8c1_o.jpg
    1387316317_88b71cd8c1_o.jpg
    324 KB · Views: 129
  • 14858578317_c01d991a26_o.jpg
    14858578317_c01d991a26_o.jpg
    223.8 KB · Views: 133
  • 470220191_b53b7edeb8_o.jpg
    470220191_b53b7edeb8_o.jpg
    140.5 KB · Views: 142
SRB Photographic still churn them out for about £12-50, unless you use Canon when there is an auto version for £100 as well as the basic model being available.

Good article here:
https://digital-photography-school.com/reverse-mounting-your-prime-lenses-for-affordable-macro-photography/

Must admit the last time I tried it was about 50 years ago when it was quite fashionable, but it worked for folks who wrote articles in photo magazines. At the magnifications I was working at it didn't show any great improvement over standard extension rings, probably because of the symetrical design of the lens I was using (or possibly my bad technique). It didn't cost me anything as I tended to fabricate my own mounts from scrap lenses (which cost next to nothing) etc. back then. I was using the reversed lens with extension tubes or a cheap manual macro bellows (which I bought).

Remember that you really need a lens that has a manual aperture control.

The one thing this article doesn't say is why you would want to reverse a lens. Normal lenses are designed to photograph objects at a distance that is relatively a long way away compared to the distance between the lens and the sensor. If you get closer than the lens is designed for you may well get abberations creeping in, by reversing the lens you can in theory restore the performance as the subject is closer to the lens than the sensor. As lenses all have different designs results are not predictable.

All in all it was an interesting exercise, but for me it wasn't worth the hassle.
 
Last edited:
Warning! This thread is more than 7 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top