
There’s a fun accessory in the photographic world that has gone out of favor due to the prevalence of zoom lenses that claim to also be macro lenses. I say “claim” because a lens that tries to be a jack of all trades tends to be master of none.
I bought this little accessory for three reasons:
- I never owned one before
- It was only $10
- I have a lens, an AF Nikkor 28mm f/2.8 that I don’t really like or use, that will go with it perfectly.
The accessory is called a reversing ring, and it’s a very simple device. It allows you to put a lens on the camera backwards. The result is super-macro images. It represents one way to get into super-macro photography for very little investment.
While the results can be pretty amazing, this arrangement does have disadvantages…
- You can’t adjust focus, meaning you are stuck with one magnification, and you focus the image by moving forward and back in very small increments.
- If you have an older Nikkor lens like my AF 28mm, you can open the aperture for a brighter image to focus, then stop down to shoot, but if you have a new AF-S Nikkor with a “G” in its name, there is no aperture ring, so you are stuck trying to compose and focus at the smallest aperture.
- The t-number, which combines with f stop to indicate actual light reaching the sensor, is quite low at these high magnifications, which will thus require more light.
Despite the difficulties, the reversing ring is a fun little accessory to have in you bag.

I bought a similar device in 2008, called a “macro coupler”, which fit the filter threads of two lenses, to attach them face-to-face — one lens mounted normally, the other one reversed out front.
Much like your device, it meant no focusing was available, but I did have aperture control over the first lens.
“…the prevalence of zoom lenses that claim to also be macro lenses…”
I’ve had a couple of these. Sigma and Tamron are pretty bad about adding the word “macro” to every lens they make that has a short minimum focus distance. Among my friends who shoot macro, 1:1 reproduction ratio is generally considered the threshold for “real macro”; I’ve only ever had one lens that could do that by itself.