More reverse-lens macro...

I had to fill up a film on the weekend to get some shots developed of my newborn (pseudo-, non-blood-relative-) nephew on his second night of being out. So to fill up the roll of film, I took a few reverse-lens macro shots.

I have to admit that the worst thing about film is when you desperately want to get some shots developed but have half a roll left to fill. However, this allows me to take photos of things like this and my wife won't be too disappointed, because there are some people shots too!

I did receive my extension tube set, so look out for more little-things-made-big shots soon.

Macro on the cheap

As I am a bit of a tight-arse (or, more correctly, I have a mortgage to pay off), I am reluctant to spend upwards of $300 for a good quality macro lens for the Minolta. A few weeks ago I came across a zero-cost way to get around this: you simply take off the fixed-focal length lens, and hold it backwards against the film body. Voila! Macro lens for nix.

The main issue I encountered is that focussing suddenly becomes a case of moving the whole camera back and forth until things are sharp. As I was also holding the lens in place at the same time, this was trickier than it sounds -  especially as I was trying to prevent light leaks as well. Not helping the situation was the need for the aperture to be wide open at 1.7 to cater for the poor lighting in my kitchen.

For the people interested, I used a Minolta XG-M slr, the lens was a Rokkor 1.7 50mm prime lens, and the film was Fuji Pro 800z. The subject above is a nozzle for piping icing onto cakes. The subjects below are a fork, the tip of the nozzle, and some spilt flour.

It didn't turn out too badly. Here's some other results...