"Macro photography is a lot of fun. Objects look very different when you view them up close, and the most ordinary things often make the most surprising close-ups. In your house, in your back yard, everywhere around you are countless things that, ordinary as they may seem to your eye, suddenly become very strange and beautiful when you look closely enough. Trouble is, the proper SLR lenses for the job are expensive and very special-purpose. Close-up filters are relatively cheap, but all they do is push the focal plane even closer to the lens, and that only gets you so far. And compact cameras are excluded from this world of photography almost entirely. All that 'macro' button on your camera does is tell the camera to try and focus as close up as it can. What you really need is MAGNIFICATION. The Poor Man's Macro technique is very simple. All you need is your favorite camera and a spare SLR lens."The poor man's macro is where you essentially take your lens off of your camera and reverse it. You hold the lens in front of your camera body and shoot through the lens backwards. I just tried it with my 50mm lens and it is certainly a cute trick. I just hope I didn't get to much dust in while doing this, otherwise this is not going to be the poor man's trick. :)