Reverse Lens Macro Photography

by irawan · March 25, 2012

Doing macro photography could be very fun as you can create a photo that your eyes won’t see in everyday life or bare eyes. It requires a special lens to capture a tiny object as a close up in details. But I just learned recently that you can do a macro photography without special pricy lenses and get a way around it. One of my photographer friends mentioned to me the other week that we can do a macro photography with a reversed lens. I was not sure what he meant at that time but he said it’s literally just reversing your lens back to front.

Not going to elaborate the science of how the reverse lens work but its pretty cool (you can see the science here: https://stephenelliot.com/2007/05/15/reverse-lens-macro-photography-tutorial/). You can just hold your lens back to front against the camera or buy a special reverse lens mount.

So then I did an experiment on it and the result is surprised me, better than I thought. This experiment I used a standard cheap lens kit EFS 18-55mm, I don’t have any insect or something more exciting to capture so I just took whatever I have in the office :

This is how I did it without reverse lens mount