Fine Tuning The Poor Man’s Macro Technique

I am always finding fun ways to take photos of things and what better way than taking photos of small, tiny little things? Since I cannot afford a proper macro lens (the Canon EF 100mm f2.8) I thought I would try and do the reverse macro trick. The reverse macro trick uses a 50mm that is held up (or mounted using a special adapter) in reverse to the camera. I did this before and the results were okay until I thought about trying it a in a different way.

Bettering the Poor Man’s Macro

So what did I do differently this time? I used my EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS lens and reverse my broken 50mm on the end of that. Since I do not have an adapter (52-58mm) I just held it in place. I also had to hold the lens at the 55mm end so I would not get as much vignetting as I did when at local focal lengths.

I switch off auto-focus, and set the aperture to about f8. I then just zoomed my hands in and out to get the best possible focus on whatever it was I was trying to focus on. Looking through the camera on the subject doesn’t give much of a depth of field to play with, but using a higher aperture I would hope more would come into focus. At least keeping my kit lens on allowed me to meter the light properly so I would get a better exposure.

To get a better idea of the sort of flower I was using as my macro test, the small little white flowers above are the ones I used as my subjects.

Not bad for not having to spend any money on a proper macro lens. I’ll have to take it out into the field and try this. Perhaps I’ll head to the flower gardens of Stanley Park and see if I can capture a bumblebee or two. I’ll look around the apartment and see if I can find some fun subjects to shoot close up as well.