This picture is of a spider that moved in on the outside windowsill of my bedroom window. If you look carefully you can see that it is sitting in the middle of its web. It is actually taking a break from building a new web. To take this picture I reversed my 58 mm lens and attached it with a reversing ring to my camera. This action makes a camera take extreme close-ups without the need for a macro lens. Had I put on some extension tubes I could have achieved an even greater magnification. I hand metered the scene and stopped down one stop (if I remember correctly) since the light was more intense on the film. I seem to recall holding the aperture pin to make the aperture work the way it would if the lens wasn't reversed. I had a very small depth of field to play with and the wind blowing the web around meant that I had to try more than once to get the picture I wanted: three tries did it. This picture was taken with my Minolta SR-3 camera, a 58mm lens that was reversed and Fuji 100 speed colour film. I don't ever remember what my exposure time was for the shot. It was c-41 processed at my local photo shop. In other words, it was no big deal to do. The difficulty came in hand metering (most people don't have hand meters anymore, although there are rules to shoot reversed lens and corrections for TTL meters that can be followed...I'll dig them up and post them.) The other problem came in actually capturing the shot I wanted. It took a bit of trying, so don't give up. Grab a macro lens, or if you want to save a LOT of money, find a reversing ring at a used camera store and give it a try.

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