I bought this. Basically, a macro lens allows for a 1:1 reproduction of reality. If you want a greater magnification ratio, you need to buy that kind of toy. Here’s a quick example with the mechanism of my cheap watch. The jewel is less than 1 mm long in reality: Original: Post-processed:
It depends. With the three rings and my 105mm I’d say 10-15 cm. You could get even higher magnification ratios with additional rings. With my 70mm, 2 cm. Sorry, metric system here.
Actually, the original pic is a “fake” HDR. I took a RAW photograph and generated three different exposures with a RAW editor. I didn’t push the settings too far because I wanted a natural look. For the post-processed image, I kind of used the same tricks I used for that pic: 1) I squared the image 2) I isolated the jewel in a new layer 3) I saturated the isolated jewel 4) I duplicated the saturated jewel ("linear dodge" blend mode) 5) Blue filter (Blue + Magenta = cool picture) 6) Added vignette and blur. Voilà.