more light needed

[aroy]

It really surprises me when some one want to achieve a goal, without any preparation, as though once they have the device in hand a "Divine Insight" will enable them to handle and get results; in this case a camera; perfectly. There are some things that you can learn "on the job" and there are things which you need to learn from books. A bit of preparation never hurts. If you do not know what your equipment does, or how to get a job done, but know only what you want, it will not help you. In fact at times it can lead to disasters. You are lucky that you did not put an old Flash Gun on your camera. It would have fried the mother board. If you want every thing to work out of the box, then a Cell Phone or a Point & Shoot is a better tool. You get what you see on the screen. Other wise :

. Read up on the net about Macro Photography. There is no short cut here.
. Read you camera manual from beginning to the end. Learn what your camera does and how.
. Read up and understand what Aperture, Speed and ISO are and how they are inter related.
. Reversing a ""G" type lense will relegate your aperture to its maximum value, here it is F22.
. Reversing a lense will loose all the dialog between the lense and the camera, hence your camera has no idea of what the focal length is, what aperture is set and at what distance you are focusing. All these are required for the flash to fire in TTL mode.

In short there is no short cut to success. Study & prepare and you will succeed fast. Fiddle blindly with the camera and it will take a long time to get what you want.

 

[nidding]

Hello.
I just wanted to toss in my 2 cents
First advise: Turn your lens back on to the normal direction and keep it that way for a few weeks!
In the mean time, switch to manual mode and learn how to control your camera. First when you understand how exposure works and how to get what you want, you should reverse your lens again. When you reverse your lens, all automatics on the camera stops. So do yourself a favour, and learn how to use manual controls first
Here's a video that explains the basics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzn6yKTVcfs

Second advise: Consider getting your hands on another lens, that actually lets you control aperture. The 18-55 is a pain in the bud to reverse, as your control over it is very bad. Getting a manual 50mm lens is pretty cheap, and as a bonus you can use it like a regular lens, which will give you a lot of practice using the manual mode

Hope it helps

 

[aroy]

Hello.
I just wanted to toss in my 2 cents
First advise: Turn your lens back on to the normal direction and keep it that way for a few weeks!
In the mean time, switch to manual mode and learn how to control your camera. First when you understand how exposure works and how to get what you want, you should reverse your lens again. When you reverse your lens, all automatics on the camera stops. So do yourself a favour, and learn how to use manual controls first
Here's a video that explains the basics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzn6yKTVcfs

Second advise: Consider getting your hands on another lens, that actually lets you control aperture. The 18-55 is a pain in the bud to reverse, as your control over it is very bad. Getting a manual 50mm lens is pretty cheap, and as a bonus you can use it like a regular lens, which will give you a lot of practice using the manual mode

Hope it helps

I totally agree with this approach.

For reversing the best option is to use the 50mm F1.8d. That lense will work both ways - normal as well as reversed on the D3xxx cameras. The only pain is manual focussing, which is quite easily mastered as Nikon provides the Range Finder in the view finder to help and nail MF. The older (hence cheaper) manual focus lenses have no CPU, there fore will not meter when put the normal way.