Back in April (2018) I bought an entry level DSLR, a Nikon D3400 to renew my interest in photography that had waned with the advent of digital. Sure I’d had a couple of compacts and taken a few decent pics, but it was all holiday snap stuff and didn’t really enthuse me.

Now, back in the day I had a second hand Canon AE1 automatic with only the 50m prime lens, I couldn’t afford any other bits. However I was fortunate to be in a job at the time where I had access to a darkroom, so I did all my own B&W development and printing, but the lens wasn’t up to my ambitions for nature and wildlife photography. Good for portraits of the kids when they were small, and buildings and landscape stuff.
Fast forward 30 years, and I bought the Nikon with an 18-55 kit lens and the Nikkor 70-300mm AF-P DX ED VR and this opened up a whole world of possibilities, all of which are on this website and on my Instagram.
One field however has started to take my fancy, and that is macro photography. The 70-300 gets pretty close, again plenty of examples amongst the insect and butterfly photos on here, for example these two both shot with the 70-300 tele

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Quite naturally I wanted to get closer, so did a bit of research and reading, and then bought one of these to try, in 58mm size it simply screws onto the 70-300 like a filter, it gives you great close-ups, and also tiny depth of field and a very narrow focus range, not to mention exaggerated camera shake   🙂

This has given great results for the price (around £50), you can click on the images below

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However reading about the other options for Macro (that don’t involve spending several hundred pounds on a dedicated macro lens) piqued my interest, particularly the fact that you can use an existing lens and simply turn it around, how simple is that! Actually pretty simple, and cheap, which is always appealing . 
As you are going to be reversing the lens it doesn’t even have to fit the camera, so basically any old lens will do, and that’s exactly what I did when I found myself in a second-hand/junk shop in Ruthven Lane a couple of weeks ago, where he had a cabinet full of old cameras and lenses. I parted with £18 for a late 80’s Tamron model 44A ( 28-70mm f3.5-4.5 Macro)

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so all we need is a 62mm to Nikon reversing ring (screws into the end of the lens where the filter would normally go, other side is the Nikon or whatever camera mount), Amazon, couple of quid

Screw the reverse ring onto the end of the Tamron, take off it’s Pentax mount to tidy up the end, and there you go new camera, old lens (backwards)

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So the astute or photographers amongst you are no doubt thinking
1, hey it’s backwards your auto exposure, auto focus, auto whatever won’t work
or
2 hey it’s a manual lens nothing will work
Both true, in fact a manual lens is a better choice, because you have lost the electronics, and, if you use the latest lenses with no manual control over aperture, how can you possibly adjust it now it’s reversed.
Manual mode is nothing to fear, I’m quite happy to guestimate shutter speed and F-stop for the conditions, take a test shot, have a look on screen and think, ‘two stops too dark’ and make adjustments either with shutter speed or aperture depending on what I’m doing, and digital is quite forgiving anyway. One last thing, it seems in macro it’s best to set the focus point and then simply move the camera closer or further away from the subject to get focus, this is actually easier than it sounds because the area in focus is pretty narrow, it just takes practice and a steady hand! 
Enough!, what about the photos, these three taken with the Tamron

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So, while they are not bad, e.g. in the third you can clearly see the spider fang sinking in to it’s meal, overall there is a kind of softness to them compared to the Marumi Achromat filter, here side by side is the Tamron and the Nikkor with Marumi

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Well, conclusions…
for £18 I think the experiment was worth doing, sold listings on ebay suggest I’ll get 30-50 quid for it if I want rid of the Tamron.
In reality I’m comparing a 1986-1988 Tamron with a 2018 Nikkor, so results might be what you’d expect  beforehand, and maybe it doesn’t help that the Tamron is a tele-macro in normal use. I suspect a 50mm Prime lens would be much better, so that’s what I’m after, nothing more than £20 mind. Maybe one day I’ll have £300+ for a decent actual macro lens, in the meantime it’s great fun experimenting