Originally posted by C.W Tsorotes 
When using a standard 50mm lense in reverse config how is that compared to using a true macro?
Aside from the AF/apperture control etc?
It really depends on the particular lenses and how much you care about details. The most likely differences will be in sharpness and distortion at the edges of the image (even good normal lenses often have a little distortion at the edges). Also, you might expect lower contrast from a primary plus reversed lens setup as there are more glass surfaces involved (probably fixable with simple post-processing.)
If the primary and reversed lens are good, I'd expect a photo of a bug in the middle of the frame to look good.
Here's a photo with a good lens reversed on a good lens compared with a good macro lens at about the same magnification (reversed 1:1.1 (50/55), macro 1:1), both at F8: (the upper left quadrant of a photo of an LCD screen)
There's not much difference even at 100% crop. To avoid the vignetting, the reversed lens should have a bigger aperture.
An Iowa Dave
Last edited by newarts; 07-19-2009 at 12:27 AM.
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