I was looking online for a lens reversing system that allowed electrical control of the lens. A found a few but they were $400-500. I've always been a bit of a technology geek so I thought that I'd share the weekend project. I started with an old EF-S 18-55mm lens. Being an EF-S mount it doesn’t fit on my Canon 5D so it’s just been gathering dust. I got the wild idea that it would be fun to see if I could get the lens to mount, reversed, and still have electrical control from the camera body.
I started by removing the lens mount and modifying it to make it the same size as a standard EF mount. Once that was done I installed a ribbon cable between the lens mount and the lens. Using an old filter as a spacer, I attached the front of the lens to the modified lens mount. On, what used to be the back of the lens, I added a mounting plate for my Canon MR-14EX ring flash. A few dabs of hot glue to keep cables from moving around and it was done.
This is my son’s pocket knife blade at ~ 2:1 magnification. With the lens at 55mm it’s roughly 1:1. It’s not going to win any beauty contests but I am very pleased with how well it works. While auto focus still technically works, it’s a bit sketchy. Aperture control, however, works just fine. The lens even reports itself correctly in the EXIF information. For a lens that is worth about $50 it does a pretty nice job.
It was a fun project and I can't wait to do more exploring with it.
wow, that's COOL. maybe i'll pick one of those up for an experiment. what is the approximate working distance?
try it with tubes and let us know how that works.
