Having spent time this week watching a lot of gragon flies I'm tempted to try some macro photography and rather than go to the expense of a macro lens I thought I would try reversing rings to begin with. Has anyone had experience with these and if so how success have they been?
Well from that list you could use a reversing ring between your 55-200mm or your 70-300mm (whichever you tend to find the sharper) and your 50mm lens. With the zoom lens on the camera body (through which you control your aperture and focus) whilst your 50mm is reversed onto that lens.
The rough maths for reversing rings is:
Focal length of the lens on the camera body - divided by - focal length of the lens reversed onto that lens = magnifaction:1
So for example on either zoom at 100mm it would be:
100/50 = 2:1
or for your 55-200mm
55/50 = 1.1:1
That would be the cheapest approach (rings are very cheap on ebay) you would just need the right ring to connect the two filter threads on the lenses together. It's also the cheapest way to get beyond 1:1 magnification (this is the standard for "true" photographic macro which all true macro lenses achieve at their closest focus).
Another option you could consider is a set of Kenko AF extension tubes on your 50mm lens. These tubes add distance between the lens and the camera and as a result they reduce the minimum focusing distance, thus you can focus closer. However they also remove infinity focusing, so like with reversing rings you won't be able to focus on regular distance subjects.
The rough maths for this magnifiaction is
Length of tubes added - divided by - focal length of the lens = magnifiaction:1
I recomend the Kenko AF tubes for two reasons:
1) they are cheaper than the own brand Nikon (and also Canon for canon readers of this thread), whilst still having a good build quality - and since they only add distance (air) there is not optical difference between them. You also get a set of 3 tubes of varying lengths that you can use one by one or all at the same time for different levels of magnification gain.
2) They have the metal contacts that allow your camera to retain both AF and aperture control over your lens. This is highly important and something that the very cheap tubes lack and means that they can't adjust the aperture of the lens through the camera.
I've also known people to use tubes on lenses like your 300mm f4 to allow them to focus closer for dragonfly, butterfly and flower shots - often using long lenses like this with a fast AF to track dragons.
A bellows also works the same way, thought with a variable distance selectable rather than fixed distances - downside of bellows is cheap versions won't have the contacts and even good grade bellows won't have the contacts and often need adaptors to allow communication between camera and lens.
The final method open to you is diopters (often incorrectly called "macro filters" because they attach like a filter to the front of the lens). Rather like tubes there are low and high grade options in these and again I recommend that you don't go for the cheap options as they will affect your image quality noticeably so. Good diopter options in include the canon 500D (yes there is a camera body by that same name as well - and it will fit on Nikons as it only a screw thread filter design) and the Raynox series of diopters (including examples such as the DCR 150 and the DCR 250).
These work similar to the extension tubes (remove infinity focus and reduce min focusing distance) - one bonus I've found (esp of the Raynox which have a variable clip attachment) is that they go on and off the lens faster than tubes which is good for quickly regaining infinity focus.
Which method you go for is your choice - remember that you can still use these methods even if you get a regular macro lens later on as you can then use them to get increased magnifications.
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