The Lens Reversal Technique?

Question

Does this work with older SLR cameras, such as the Canon A-1. Also, does it work with any kind of lens, or only certian lenses - which lenses.

Answer 1

You need a lens reversing ring. They are sized according to the filter size for your lens. The largest I've seen is 58mm but there might be larger ones. Usually, though, lenses from 50mm to 135mm are reversed for extreme close-ups.

Answer 2

Yes, you can reverse the lens on the Canon A-1.

You need an adapter which will mount on the lens mount and have a filter thread on the front of it. These are readily available on Ebay.

It will work with most any lens, however in general you're better off sticking with either 50mm or 100mm lenses(or anything in this range) to give you the best possible results.

Controlling the aperture of the lens can get a bit confusing. Canon made a special adapter which could be connected to a cable release, and would stop the lens down to the aperture set on the aperture ring. These are a bit hard to find.

Without one of these rings, controlling the aperture starts to get really hairy.

First of all, let's consider a Canon-made lens with a chrome breech lock ring. On these, you need to make the lens think it's mounted on a camera body by twisting the breech lock ring around. There's a small button inside the lens mount that needs to be pressed to unlock the ring. Once the ring is rotated around, press the stop down lever on the back of the lens over to the point where it locks in place. The lens should now open and close with the aperture ring.

If you have a lens with a new-style bayonet mount(dismounts by pressing a button on the side of the lens), things get really complicated. On all lenses of this style, you need to use a special something Canon made called a "macro hood", which is basically a lens cap with a hole through the back of it. You can't make one yourself, though, as a normal lens cap won't turn far enough on the lens for this to properly work. On all lenses of this style except for the 50mm Macro and 100mm Macro, you need a special little plastic adapter which will lock the aperture stopdown lever in place. Unfortunately, there's also no real substitute for this. You'll need to watch Ebay for both a macro hood and one of these adapters.

As for metering, you'll need to use stopdown mode. Just slide in the stop down slide at the base of the A-1's lens mount, and the metering should work fine. The A-1's meter is sensitive enough that it's an excellent camera for macro work.

For pictures of how all of this fits together, see the camera manual.