Very new to taking things above 1:1 (1 week new even) and first shot posted in this forum - taken last Sunday handheld using a reversed Pentax SMC-k 50 1.2 lens, with homemade diffuser on top at 1/8. I got lucky, this is the entire frame. If you click through you should be able to get to the full size which shows a lot more detail in the eye than this resized version.
In terms of critique, the lighting, composition and extra flash all worked ok, but it's a bit underexposed and noisy (my cam struggle with noise in dark areas). On the other hand any more and the reflections in the eyes might have been too much, so swings and roundabouts I guess. The depth of field could have been greater but this was I think f8 so the viewfinder becomes too dark to focus above that and diffraction issues would probably set in too. The 50 reversed seems pretty good (compared to various other 50s I've reversed) but as it was designed for b&w it will always have PF/CA issues and I have not really explored ways to control that yet. I've purchased an el-nikkor 50 2.8 so I should be able to do a comparison between various Pentax lenses and that sometime in the future when and if I finally figure out which stage will work on my tripod.
Thanks for looking. C&C gratefully appreciated.
