I am not much into macro photography, (unless we are talking about scanning tunneling microscope photography) but I am always interested in people experimenting with Do It Yourself photography equipment and techniques. One such well known technique, when you don’t want to invest in an expensive Macro Lens, is to just take any (preferably normal or wider) prime lens and turn it around – i.e. mount it on your camera with the front element towards the film/sensor and the back element facing the subject.
This gives you the desired magnification required for photographing tiny objects – voila! Macro Photography. The main tricky part for this macro setup is to attach the lens properly without any light leaks and to make sure that the resulting lens + camera combination is sufficiently stable.- With very close focusing distances, the camera shake is one of the major factors for unsharp /blurry photographs. The other major factor that causes blur is, guess what, subject movement! So, even if your camera is very stable and all, if the subject is not, the macro shots are not going to be good. But when you overcome both these hurdles, even a simple camera lens turned around can produce spectacular macro photographs.
This is exactly what Iranian photographer Omid Golzar did when he shot the spiders, moths, wasps and beetles in extreme close-up – taking ‘macro’ pictures by simply reversing a normal camera lens to magnify the subject.
A wasp in close-up, showing the normally invisible hairs that cover its shell – Macro Photography by Omid Golzar
Apparently, he refrigerated the insects to reduce “subject shake”. To read more and see more of his macro photos of bugs, all taken using the turn around lens (he used a normal 28mm lens to take these stunning insect photos), go to the daily mail article.