As I sit here today avoiding the things that need to be done around the house I’m thinking of ways to try out a fun technique that I’ve using in one of my Instagram loops. On Tuesday, at 8PM EDT, a group of artists each post an image, on Instagram, they created using the reverse freelensing technique. Freelensing is when you take the lens off your camera and hold it close to the camera body and shoot. You have to understand and be able to use your camera in manual mode because it’s not doing any calculations for you! Reverse freelensing is taking that detached lens, turning the lens around and placing the lens, not the mount, near the opening on your camera body and creating your image.
I was introduced to this concept many years ago. When you reverse freelance, you create a macro effect with your non-macro lens or if you use a macro lens, it gets even more macro-ier! That’s not a word, but you get my drift. It increases that macro effect. Ever so fearful of dropping my lens or camera or , worse, both, I only tried it over cushions on a bench seat. If I dropped anything it wouldn’t go far and it would land on a well padded surface. Over the years I’ve grown to be more confident in my skills. You can probably use almost any lens you want assuming you can hold and operate your camera with one hand and your lens in the other. Smaller lenses make this technique much easier to accomplish.
When I first started I used an old 50mm Nikon lens. There are some tricks to using this Nikon lens because of the aperture ring, which I won’t go into here, but the 50mm 1.8 is cheap if you get it used. You can Google how to hack your lens so the aperture ring stays open. Next I bought a Helios 44-2. Oh, the bokeh! I tend to travel with less lenses than I used to so I started just using whichever lens I had with me. Nowadays it tends to a Lensbaby lens. Often it’s my Velvet 56 but I like using my Sweet 35 and my Edge 80 too! I am in awe of some of the blur and bokeh effects I can create using this technique! The results are different with each lens you chose.
If you want to give this technique a try, I suggest doing it over a padded surface the first few times. Try it inside without any air blowing around. Turn your ceiling fans off! This will keep the dust that can enter your camera and get on your sensor to a minimum. If you’re confident in cleaning your own sensor, you have a bit more freedom to play, but if you pay someone to clean it or don’t like removing dust spots in post processing this might not be your thing! Use your camera strap! This will keep your camera from falling to the floor. Set your camera settings before you detach your lens. Keep the lens close to the camera but be careful not to put/get anything inside the camera opening. If you like light leaks you move the lens slightly off the camera at different angles. Just play until you find what you like! Have more questions? Please use the contact form and ask!
Removing the lens from your camera and shooting can be dangerous. You can drop your camera, lens, or both. You can get dust on your sensor. An insect can fly in and do damage. If you decide to try this, please do so at your own risk!