Yesterday…and today..the UK was in the throes of Storm Dennis. As the area I live in, well, most of the UK…was under a yellow storm warning…Scratch all that. Yesterday there was a storm and I decided to stay in and hunt through my photo equipment boxes to make a list of what I had.

Basically, I wanted to know what lenses I had for what mounts. I was looking for a Minolta 100-300mm which I thought I might have. Despite the storm, spring is on the way and I will be going out birding and wanted a lens to fit the Sony a37 I have. That camera is my, take out and don’t mind if it gets destroyed camera. Rather than my, holy crap please don’t break, camera. I know lots of people take their best, most expensive camera everywhere. I am not one of those people. If I am going to drop a camera in mud or bash it against a rock by mistake, it can be the one I got for £100 and can afford to replace. I doubt I will ever be in a position to take a photo of a bird where I absolutely need a Nikon D750 to improve it. And I certainly can’t afford a super zoom lens for it. Anyway…I didn’t have one. I left it in Japan, bugger. You are enjoying this post aren’t ya 🙂

Here is are some photos of bird I took to make yourself feel better.

So what was in the box? Or boxes, I took the time to organise them better too. Now one box is for flash stuff and filters, one box is for lenses and adapters. AND in that box I found two Nikon reversing rings. well, I actually I found two ringy type things that I had no idea what they were. The packages said AT 58mm and AT 52mm. So I did a google search…and voila reversing rings, cool!!! and they would fit my Nikon, double cool!!!

Well, might as well give them a whirl.

To use it, I put the camera in manual mode and focused by moving the camera backwards and forwards. With the lens on in reverse, you have no control of the auto focus or the aperture adjustment. Luckily, there is a handy lever on the side of the lens.

You can use that to adjust the aperture, pushing it will open it wider. The effects are visible through the viewfinder immediately. You can also use an old type lens with a built in aperture selector. I have found with this type of photography, you need as much light as possible.

The last time I tried macro photography I used a film camera and a bellows attachment. It was tricky to get the exposure right. I much prefer digital for this type of activity. It is cheaper and you don’t have to wait to see if you got it right. Once attached I wandered around my house and then, during a break in the rain, I went outside. I didn’t take many photos as I was just trying it out, but I am really looking forward to trying it in spring…or if there is ever some snow/ice.

Here are the results.

As with all macro photography, there is a very shallow depth of field. You can see two photos of long leaves that I took on rapid shutter, the difference in focusing points was caused by my slight camera movement..really slight. I might try a tripod setup in the future and try some focus stacking. I haven’t done that before either.

So what else was in the boxes?? At least 3 lenses that I have no body to attach them too…that drives me crazy. One of them I can’t even tell what it would fit, nothing I own right now.