Getting Closer

You could do worse than buy a Vivitar 100mm f/3.5 macro lens. The same lens is also available badged as Cosina (who make it) and as (rare) Pentax FA. Some refer to it as the "plastic fantastic". You should be able to get the AF version for less than £100 and the MF version for not much more than half that.

Andrew

Andrew has a good point there. It's an amazing lens and costs very little.

Well done, Nigel Using extension tubes is very demanding. I gave up quite early on as the viewfinder is so dark making focusing difficult.

Thanks for the encouragement I enjoy getting in close to these sort of subjects, so you're guaranteed plenty more from the K7 & I ...

Is it recently on digital you used tubes, or are you talking about back in the olden filmy days? Because I used the LCD live view feature for focussing & shooting with the remote - mirror is up already which is a bonus for vibraction control, and with the info button I zoomed into the centre focus area at 4x magnification for very precise adjustments. It helps that the Tamron 135 has a big focus throw, but the LV technique is really a great help for this kind of photography!

Ah yes, good point. This was in digital times but before live view. I can see how that would be helpful. Very helpful, in fact.

I think the aperture would be left wide open on the reversed 28 and set to the appropriate value on the other lens mounted in the normal way to the camera. Otherwise, you would have a very dark viewfinder as the reversed lens would be set permanently to whatever aperture.

When reversing a lens onto the front of another one, you are effectively making it the front element, so I don't see why you would operate the aperture at anything other than wide open.

Regards
David

That sounds logical David, thanks, I will certainly try that technique when I get hold of the right adaptor.

You would normally use the secondary (camera mounted) lens wide open and the primary (reversed) lens stopped down to avoid vignetting. Even like this you can still get vignetting if using a reversed wide angle and a slow primary lens. This does mean you have to manually open up the primary for focusing and then close it down for metering and shooting.

I guess that if for your lens combo you can get away with stopping down the primary it'll be more convenient although even best case you probably won't be able to stop down much before vignetting starts. Not that vignetting is always a bad thing for macro shots.

Thanks Rob, makes sense as well! I will have to experiment quite a bit. For now I'm just looking forward to getting time to shoot more closeup flowers with the tubes.