Macro photo info

I would like to take better macro photos so I was looking for macro photos on the net and I stumbled upon this website with incredible photos of insects. Apparently the author used an old regular 50mm single lens reflex camera lens turned it backwards and could take wonderful photos with is old Canon G3 and G4 digital cameras. I haven't quite figured out what equipment he used but I think it was a macro coupler ring or two clear filters glued together to provide two male threads in opposite directions so you can attach one end to the camera filter fitting (for most cameras you would have to buy an additional coupler that fits your digital camera if there's one available) and the other end to attach to the 50mm lens. It's easier to understand if you take a look at the website. Here it is.

I tried just handholding a 50mm lens from my old SLR Pentax camera up to the lens of my digital camera and took a picture of the bug you see in the photos. I need to work on the focusing but you can clearly see that this might work. And the magnification is huge. This was a very tiny bug about the size of a rice grain. I could see that it had different colors but not the chevrons or patterning with my naked eye. The penny indicates how small it actually is. So I'm off on another quest.

Rurality suggested a great website which has much better instructions on how to do point and shoot camera macro photography than the one I suggested above and also an article on DSLR macro photography. The site is called The How Zone and it has wonderful how to information on all sorts of things like how to attract birds and butterflies to your yard, how to make a lighting softbox, how to make ginger beer etc. As Cheech said, checkit out!