(June 2020) Lockdown is still a reality, so time to tinker with something new. I've always been intrigued by macro photography, but the thought of buying a dedicated lens just to mess around seems a little excessive. However, there is a cheaper option. If you have an old prime lens lying around, you can attach it back-to-front on your camera and marvel at the magnifying effect it produces.
So how do you attach it? Well, you can hold it up in front of your camera with your hand, but unless you're a statue, you'll likely end up with blurry, flared mess that you're unlikely to pass off as 'art', no matter how convincing you are. The best example of my handheld attempt is below.
The better option is to get yourself a reversing ring. They are cheap and usually available in a variety of sizes, so you can get one that's the same size as the diameter of the lens you want to attach.
Now that the lens is attached, there are other challenges. Because the lens is not attached at its mount point, there is no communication between the camera and the lens. Your camera's friendly digital assistants that adjust the aperture and ISO will wave their hands around in despair and offer you nothing useful. So here's what you need to do:
* If you can, find an old lens that has a manual aperture ring. That way, you can adjust the aperture on the lens itself.
* Get used to moving around a lot. You cannot autofocus or use the lens's focus ring, so you need to move around until thing you're taking a picture of is in focus. A tripod helps enormously.
* Use your camera's live view to help you figure out your focus point, and use manual mode. Do not trust the exposure settings that your camera offers you. It has absolutely no idea what it's doing without its usual communication channel to your lens (and has no idea what the aperture is), so it will be completely wrong. I found that bumping up the ISO high to help me focus in live view, and then reducing it right down to 100 and playing around with the shutter speed to get right exposure was the most effective. On a tripod, of course.
Here's what I used in the end:
* A Canon 100D
* A 55mm reversing ring
* An old Canon 50mm prime lens (the old FD mount type)
* A mini tripod (Manfrotto Pixi)
* A remote cable release