Ring shot without macro?

[e1rlindsay]

Hello all,

Is there a good way to get a ring shot without a macro lens or tube extension? I'm doing my first wedding this weekend (as a favor for a friend) and wanted to do a nice shot of the rings, but don't have a macro lens or anything. I currently have the nifty fifty, my 55-250 zoom, a wide angle and my kit lens...

ps- i'm giving myself an ulcer over this wedding...it's on saturday and i'm super nervous! I've studied and read and practiced to death, but i'm still pretty worked up over it. this may be my first and last wedding, lol....

[emdzey01]

Do you have any rings lying around?

Try your 55-250 and see if you can get a decent ring shot out of it. If it cant focus close enough, find the MFD and incorporate an interesting background while still allowing the rings to be the focal point of the image.

If you wanna try something crazy, reverse mount your lens to another lens and see if that helps.

[EC.Photo]

Weddings are stressful by nature

You can certainly get good ring shots without macro, I've used my 24mm and 70-200mm and so on for ring shots. Macro makes it much easier and you can get very close, but there's nothing that says you can't do good detail shots with other lenses. Like emdzey01 said, grab some rings and just get a feel for how close you can go with your different lenses and what you can do with what you have.

Don't forget you can step back to get close with your zoom lenses.

[Peacefield]

I have a macro lens and bring it to every wedding, though the reality is I don't tend to bother to mount it. Although not macro close, the 24-70 can get close enough and cropping does the rest (though I hate throwing away all those pixels that I paid for). It's just a lot faster, easier, and gets the job done very well.

[mike_311]

what lenses do you have?

[scorpio_e]

If you are doing the getting ready shots, ask to have the rings available where the bride is getting ready. This way you can do all the details images in one place.

You can reverse your nifty 50 for macro.

You should be able to get a decent close up rings shots. The minimum focusing distance is 3.6 ft. So at 250mm that should work out nice.

Good luck with the wedding.

[picturecrazy]

I've actually gotten macro ring shots using a 50mm lens and holding it about 1/4 inch away from the lens mount with nothing but my fingers. A poor man's brutally inaccurate extension tube. It worked. It also give a tilt-shift looking blur pattern because it's impossible to hold the lens perfectly parallel to the lens mount. With live view now, it's not even that hard! Set your lens to MFD, turn on live view, compose your shot, zoom in to 5X or 10X and snap the pic when the critical part of the image is in focus. You focus by moving the camera/lens closer and further from the ring. It works surprising well.

[Red Tie Photography]

Originally Posted by picturecrazy

I've actually gotten macro ring shots using a 50mm lens and holding it about 1/4 inch away from the lens mount with nothing but my fingers. A poor man's brutally inaccurate extension tube. It worked. It also give a tilt-shift looking blur pattern because it's impossible to hold the lens perfectly parallel to the lens mount. With live view now, it's not even that hard! Set your lens to MFD, turn on live view, compose your shot, zoom in to 5X or 10X and snap the pic when the critical part of the image is in focus. You focus by moving the camera/lens closer and further from the ring. It works surprising well.

I would love to see that shot. Heck, I may even try it myself (imagine that!)

[e1rlindsay]

I'm going to test this out tonight...thanks!!

[e1rlindsay]

"You can reverse your nifty 50 for macro. "

how do i do this??

[e1rlindsay]

ok, by "rever the nifty 50" i decided you meant just hold it up to the camera backwards, which worked like a charm! It leaves the edges of the photo super blurry, but i think that can work out good, too!

[2ndshooter]

I've seen decent ring shots using a 50mm... No need to look crazy! lol

[DennisW1]

I'm almost ashamed to admit this, but I used to do ring shots and the rings on the invitation and other shots like that with a Mamiya 645 using the standard 80mm lens and a set of Tiffen close-up filters.

Matter of fact I still have those filters laying around somewhere, just don't have any lenses anymore that use a 58mm thread size.

Cringe if you must, you macro lens purists, but it worked. You had to be very careful because there was virtually NO depth of field but if you got it right the results were beautiful.

Hey, anyone with a lens that takes 58mm filters wanna buy a set of close up lenses?

[scorpio_e]

I heard the Canon close up lens is REALLY good.

[FlyTvr]

Originally Posted by Peacefield

I have a macro lens and bring it to every wedding, though the reality is I don't tend to bother to mount it. Although not macro close, the 24-70 can get close enough and cropping does the rest (though I hate throwing away all those pixels that I paid for). It's just a lot faster, easier, and gets the job done very well.

Couldn't agree more! The 24-70 F2.8L (mk1) does a great job for me. I also use a 35mm F1.4 (on a 5d3) and that gives pretty good results.

I am sure that a macro lens would do better, but as I don't do macro photography, I don't want to buy one just for ring shots

Cheers.

Dav