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.