My latest macro rig

After popular demand, by people who saw my latest spider macro, I decided to post a photo of my latest macro rig, in order to explain a bit more about it.

I had this equipment to begin with:
- Canon EOS 400D camera (also known as Digital Rebel XTi)
- Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens
- Canon EF 35mm f/2 lens

I had learned by others who use this technique, that if I reversed the 35mm lens it would double as a magnifying glass. I could attach it in front of my other 100mm macro lens in order to enhance the magnification ratio. All I needed to securely connect them was a coupler ring that matches the filter thread size of my two lenses and that would be, in my case, a 52mm to 58mm. I easily found one on Ebay for the price of 5€ (including shipping costs from the US to Greece).

With this setup, you can only focus (manually) on subjects really close. I included a pen in the above photo, in order for you to understand how close I'm talking about.

You understand that at this distance the depth of field (DoF) is too shallow and focusing is very difficult. If you move a few mm away from the subject, you lose it completely from the viewfinder! It certainly takes some practice. I had already heard that the easiest way to focus would be to move your body forward & backward, instead of using the focusing ring, so that's what I did.

Properly lighting the subject is another problem. In order to have any DoF at all I had to close the aperture of the 100mm lens as much as possible (f/32) and you simply can't have enough light without using a flash. Problem is I don't have an external flash and my only option was to use the on-board flash. But the subject is so close, it gets shadowed by the very lens, so my only option was to bounce the light of the flash. The reflector used was a plain white sheet of paper, positioned behind the subject.

I hope this helps...