Too cheap to go out and spend a large sum of cash on a macro lens? But you really want to take photos of impossibly small stuff? Well today is your lucky day, here’s a little tutorial on how to accomplish this without spending lots of money you needn’t! There is only one requirement though… you need an SLR, because you need to be able to detach your lens from your camera’s body. But that goes without saying because you really wouldn’t need this tutorial if you didn’t have an SLR because you wouldn’t be looking for macro lenses anyway, unless you stumbled upon this review and are just curious.

Anyway, so this a a quick and dirty way to get some tiny, tiny macro shots; it’s called the Reverse Lens Technique.

First step: Grab your trusty SLR, or grab a friends.

Second step: Remove your lens.

Third step: Turn the lens around, hold it against the camera body so that it sits lined up straight like when it is actually attached to the camera.

Fourth step: Find something with fine detail that you want to take a picture of. For example I’ll use this x-acto knife with it’s detailed grippy part.

Fifth step: Take a picture! Be careful though, you need an incredibly steady hand or your pictures will come out quite blurry.

You’ll definitely take plenty of bad shots while trying to use this technique, so shoot a ton of photos, cross your fingers and toes, and hope for the best. Also to note about this technique, you must be aware that this method results in an incredibly small depth of field as you can see above. So, if you don’t have a lot of cash burning a hole in your pocket, and if you’ve got yourself an SLR (most likely the cause of not having cash burning a hole in your pocket), you might give this a try before giving up.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 19th, 2006 at 8:17 PM and is filed under Technique.