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Get two more lenses from your 50mm lens

Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from the Geek Tech blog at PCWorld.com.

A 50mm lens is just about the second thing every photographer should have in their kit after a camera body. It's compact, sharp, and versatile, and it's possibly the least expensive lens you will ever buy. But did you know you could also turn it into two additional lenses for less than $100?

Camera pictured with telephoto lens a adapter and reverse ring adapter.

That's right—for some relative chump-change, you could turn a prime lens into a multitasker. Transform your 50mm into a macro lens for those extreme close-ups, or into a telephoto lens to see farther away, with just a few reasonably priced attachments. It's a great way to have a little fun with your DSLR and save yourself from having to buy specialty lenses. It's also a perfect way to pack light if you are going away for the holidays.

The rig I used for testing and my shots was a crop-sensor DSLR, the Nikon D7000, and a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D lens.

50mm Prime Lens

Is there anything a 50mm lens isn't good for? It works great in low light and when stopped down, and it can make any shot dramatic with a shallow depth-of-field and bokeh (the aesthetic blurring of out-of-focus areas). It's also the lens that most closely mimics the human eye in terms of magnification and field of view—minus a great deal of peripheral vision—which allows it to capture "natural" looking pictures that make it seem as though you were actually there. The photo above is an example of what this particular lens can do without any modification.

The Bokeh effect

Macro Lens

Converting your 50mm into a macro lens is as simple as flipping it backwards. That's it. Easy, right?

Well, not quite. Sure, you could just flip it around and hold the lens up against your body or you could do something more practical and buy a simple reverse ring adapter for $8. It's an extremely cheap and fun way of experimenting with macro (close-up) photography without having to buy any specialized macro glass.

Once you've reverse-mounted your 50mm lens, you might notice that everything is blurry and think that you've just broken your lens. Nothing is wrong; you just need to get close—and I mean really close—to your subject. To take a good macro shot, you should be between 1-to-3-inches away from your subject.

A really complicated Bokeh

Another thing you might notice is that the inside of your lens and the metal contacts are now facing outwards. This means that the lens is no longer communicating with the camera, so you won't be able to use the autofocus or any electronic aperture control. You can always use the manual focus ring, which I usually just set to infinity. However, adjusting your aperture on a new lens without an aperture ring is impossible, and this makes reverse mounting practically unusable.

Luckily, there are other methods to get a macro effect, such as using extension tubes. These are just hollow rings that move your lens farther away from the camera body allowing you to focus more closely than you normally would. The end result is a magnified image. Another great thing about extension tubes is that you can also use them with other longer lenses to give them that extra telephoto reach.

The tubes come in sets that add multiple levels of length, and some even include wiring that allows the lens to connect electronically with the camera body. In this case, I recommend avoiding cheaper rings that lack circuitry, thus creating the same problem as when you use reversing adapters with newer lenses. Instead, buy a set from Zeikos that runs for $67 on Amazon (as of 12/14/2011); it gives you 13mm, 21mm, and 31mm extension tubes that add 0.26x, 0.42x, and 0.62x factors of magnification, respectively, to a 50mm lens.

I closed the aperture to f/16 on this one to show that the reverse mounted 50-mm lens can do really detailed macros too.

Telephoto Lens

Telephoto lenses are big, hulking, expensive pieces of glass. But if you just want to add that little bit of optical reach to your 50mm lens, you could buy an Opteka 2.2x telephoto lens adapter for $50.

This lens adapter screws to the front of your lens along the filter threads, and basically acts as a magnifying glass that doubles your lens' focal length. So with this add-on, your nifty 50mm essentially becomes a 110mm; if you are using a crop-sensor DSLR, an 85mm becomes a 187mm lens.

There is surprisingly little to no loss in detail; just look at those the roof shingles and the tree branches.

The quality of the images is just as sharp as what you'd get with a naked 50mm, and you'll still get that shallow depth-of-field even when you're focusing on something far away.

The bokeh also seems to translate well, especially on the right rack and objects in the background.

Just the beginning

This is just a taste of what you can do with your 50mm lens. If you have a spare lens cap lying around, you could always drill a hole in it and make yourself a digital pinhole camera. Opteka also makes other adapters for lenses, including a 0.45x wide-angle adapter that turns a 50mm into a 22.5mm lens for those landscape photos.

What are you waiting for? Get out there and have fun with these lens tricks!