Homemade macro

I work in an office next door to a guy called Dan who dabbles in photography. Occasionally, I'll break my day up by popping next door for a chin wag about something or other. Last week I were out on work's terrace taking some photos of some caterpillars eating some lettuce our Client Services Director grows.

I showed Dan the shots and both thought a macro lens would have done a way better job. That brought him to suggesting something he'd read somewhere and I thought I'd share it here.

Here comes the how to...

To achieve this, you need your kit lens and a 50mm. Start by hooking your kit lens up to your camera body.

Then take your 50mm, take off the lens caps, turn it around (so the part you normally hook up to your body is facing away from the camera) and place it on the front of the kit lens lined up so it looks like a telephoto lens. I've been shooting with the kit lens set at 18mm and am yet to see what happens shooting at different focal lengths, something for another day I suppose.

All that's left to do is go point your camera at something really small and be sure to get nice and close (about an inch or two) and you'll see some cool results...

A few caveats

As you can see from the examples above, the field of view is extremely limited and you don't have any aperture control (at least with the 50mm) but it's still a nifty trick to have under your belt when you need to take a close up snap of something.

Despite not owning one myself, I know that this is no substitute for a proper macro lens in your bag but this may be a good way to experiment before you commit to forking out cash on a new lens.

I've also not tried this with any other camera models except Canon but I imagine the same results can be achieve on any brand. If there are any differing steps for Nikon or Olympus or any other brands, let me know and I'll update this post.