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It's a beautiful day. I set the alarm for too-early-for-a-Saturday and got to the Mercer Arboretum when it opened. Many thanks to Michael for letting me borrow a Nikkor 50mm lens to place on the macro coupling ring I purchased last week. His lens is an f1.4 so it's quite fast and made things a bit easier in the low light levels before the sun got high in the sky. Lens reversal improves working distance a little bit over stacking diopters, but the DOF goes to shit because of the magnification. It is extremely hard to get a shot just right on the focal plane when working camera in hand. Also, I need a lot of light to shoot at any reasonable shutter speed with the smallest aperture setting (needed at macro). The answer is a rack mount external flash and some diffusers. I don't have any. The morning hours were wonderful. I had the whole place to myself it seemed. I mean, there were a few people there, but they were quiet and appreciative. By 9:30, the walkways and paths were filled with kids and families and professional photographers shooting wedding and engagement hoo-ha. It was time for me to leave. I haven't looked through any of the pics yet, but I'm sure about 95% of them turned out poorly. It was my first attempt at lens reversal for macro. I'm sure that over time I'll get better at it... especially DOF management. I'll post a few later.