While the idea of trying macro photography has always been of interest to me, I have never got around to actually doing it aside from an old lens I had in my pre-autofocus days that had a macro setting.  The idea of renting a macro lens had occurred to me but the reason to do it hadn’t come up and I didn’t feel like renting the lens without having something to use it on.

Then I remembered reading about reversing a lens to use it for macro.  I have a 50mm that I I hand held in reverse to see how well the macro effect would work.  It seemed pretty good so I decided to get a mounting ring to reverse the lens on the camera.  Amazon came up with a bunch of options and the one I got set me back the enormous total of $8!

The simple answer is that it works.  It is a little inflexible to use compared to something designed for the task but it does work.  The depth of field is extremely shallow and you get some odd distortion across the edges of the image.  Obviously there is no focus or exposure control.  I just set the camera to aperture priority mode and dial in the normal f/1.8 of the lens and the exposure seems to work out pretty well.  Then it is a case of moving the camera around to get focus.  Not something I am going to do a lot but, for $8, I don’t have to worry about getting a lot of use out of it!