I grabbed a $12 lens reversing ring to play with. Now it’s probably my favorite camera accessory. I tested it on my 18-55mm lens yesterday.

Here’s a 100% crop of the 2 in 2007:

Today I went out to get some shots of plants. Mechanical objects usually look crude under magnification, but biological stuff has interesting patterns.

While I was out, a bug posed for me.

You can see my reflection in the bug’s thorax.

There’s a reason the 100% crops are a little blurry. A lens reverser is much cheaper than a macro lens, but it disables the camera’s autofocus and autoexposure. I have to adjust the focus ring, hold the aperture tab open, snap the picture, see how it came out, and change my settings appropriately. If the aperture is too wide, the depth of field will be so shallow that most of the picture will be out of focus. If the aperture is too small, the picture will be underexposed and have diffraction artifacts. I get usable pictures about 5% of the time.

Despite difficulties getting good shots, macro photography is fun. Ordinary flowers become fractal forests. Annoying bugs transform into alien ornithopters. Bees turn into… well they just look like giant bees.