Reversing lens

I have decided to try my hand at reversing a lens in an attempt at broadening my horizons, or macros so to speak.

I decided to make my own adapter as i have a few bits and pieces lying about.
Sacificed a couple of old filters and removed the mount from an old Sun lens with a broken aperture and glued it all together with Araldite.




I intend to use this by reversing my Pentax A 1.7 straight onto my extension tubes. Not sure what sort of magnification i will get with that combo, any ideas :

What is the consensus for using reverse lenses, is there an optimum lens to reverse : 1.4,1.7,2.0,2.8 :

Do you leave the reversed lens wide open when coupled with another lens : or should you stop it down. I suspect you control the aperture from the lens on the body : As i will be using just the reversed lens and tubes i will have to stop it down with the reversed lens.

I intend to make a 49mm to 49mm adapter so I can use 2 lenses instead of 1, but will see how this pans out first.

What are your thoughts, am i going about this the wrong way or is there a method to my madness.

Just experiment, you'll get massive magnification and better quality than using a lens the right way round.

The best 50mm lenses for this are not the very wide aperture ones, which geberally have poor field flatness. The f1.7 and f2 lenses will behave best.

Try a 28mm reversed and prepare to be amazed...

Thanks John i have an old Tokina RMC 28mm 2.8 with the aperture stuck wide open, maybe i could utilise that. :

28 is the way to go, I haven't found any need to reverse mine onto another lens yet. Extension tubes are enough if you don't mind getting close.

I did try reversing onto a 210 but although I got about 24x macro (good for a money spider's kneecap) it was really soft. (and as you say, front lens open, body lens to control the aperture - learnt that here )