I need your opinions on stacked lenses setup for extreme macro photography.
I own a Nikon D5600. I bought a Nikon AF-S 40mm f1.8G Micro lens together with the body. Then, Nikon, as a part promotion for purchasing a new body, sent me a brand new 70-300mm DX VR zoom lens. It's this lens here.
I've seen some people doing extreme macro using stacked lenses, usually a lens with long focal length as the primary lens (attached to the body) and a reversed lens mounted to the primary lens using a coupler ring. They are able to go beyond 1:1.
I would like to do that too, since I have a very long zoom lens. My setup would be the 70-300 as the primary lens, and a Nikon 50mm f1.8D as the reversed lens.
However, I have a quite a few questions that I would like some answers or opinions before I purchase the 50mm.
What will be the minimum working distance ? I would like to shoot insects too (My 40mm macro lens is too short for shooting insects.).
What to expect from the image quality in terms of sharpness, chromatic aberration, distortion etc ? Will the resulting image quality be on par with my 40mm macro lens ? I've read reviews online for both the 70-300mm and the 50mm. The 50mm is tack sharp and the 70-300mm is quite good.
The 50mm will be mounted to the 70-300mm using a 58mm to 52mm coupler ring (The 70-300mm has a 58mm filter size while the 50mm has a filter size of 52mm). Will there be vignetting due to the smaller filter size of the 50mm ?
The math behind the magnification is the focal length of the primary lens divided by the focal length of the reversed lens. In my case, the maximum magnification would be 6x (300/50). However, the 50mm is a full frame lens. Normally, it would be a 75mm (1.5x crop factor) when mounted directly to the body. However, in this situation, it will be mounted in reverse, far far away from the sensor. So, will it act as a 50mm or a 75mm ?
I read somewhere that infinity focus out of the question with stacked lenses. Is it true ?
If there's anything that I'm not aware of, please let me know. Phew...that's a very long one. I hope that you guys will help me with those questions.