Repurposing an old lens: the reverse macro lens

Yesterday I got my lens reversal ring! It's basically a K-mount ring with 49mm male filter thread on it. This allows one to mount a lens onto a camera backwards and this works great for macro photography! There's a little background reading on Wikipedia.

I'm using the following configuration: my old Olympus 50mm F1.8 in reverse, macro extension tubes and a 2x teleconverter. I admit, it's an odd looking tower.

My "macro lens"

The macro setup also looks a little dodgy: I had to improvise a lighting rig because the desk lamps I normally use didn't have enough power to light the coins I was going to photograph. It's ghettolicious!!

Judge for yourself:

The setup

Dodgy or not, the results aren't bad at all!

Mosquito
(Pentax K-5, Olympus 50mm f1.8 + extension tubes + 2x TC,
1/200s, 100mm, ISO 3200)

German 5 cent coin
(Pentax K-5, Olympus 50mm f1.8 + extension tubes + 2x TC,
1/20s, 100mm, ISO 800)

German 1 euro coin
(Pentax K-5, Olympus 50mm f1.8 + extension tubes + 2x TC,
1/40s, 100mm, ISO 800)

Sugar
(Pentax K-5, Olympus 50mm f1.8 + extension tubes + 2x TC,
1/30s, 100mm, ISO 800)

I've uploaded more coin images to this Flickr set. It's an on going project dubbed "Macro Economy" (pun intended); I'll keep adding more currency ;)