Power of 18-55 reversed

Yogendra Joshi - Macro Magic

What use is really a 18-55 Kit-Lens for Macro?? ... is THIS good enough!!

Zero crop stack of three shots taken at max magnification (18mm reverse). The subject damselfly is 2mm in width eye-to-eye which i found half-dead around my building. Used camera mounted flash, but could have easily used pop-up flash with home made diffuser with no real difference to the result. 

Just wanted to prove a point to someone .. and wanted to stretch what can be done with mere 18-55 reverse mounted (so that adds Rs. 185 to your existing equipment if you buy the cheapest one on ebay, which i too have).

BTW, i am not claiming this as perfect shot and and truly opening it up for critique in case i have overlooked something basic while stretching the magnification (or just being too arrogant about my skills.. its the time to correct before i can take the next step, feel free to chime in with comments / suggestions / bricks!)

P.S: Took few shots with all three setups i have, 1) 18-55 reverse, 2) 70-300 + Raynox and 3) 2 extension tubes + 50mm manual lens... and surprisingly 18-55 reversed at 18 mm gave the best results (not always but still gives best magnification!)

Processing:
- Saved 3 raw shots from Picasa to jpg (lossless)
- Aligned and Stacked in CombineZP (Freeware)
- Saved the aligned frames and final output to tif (4 tifs)
- Small editing in GIMP (Freeware) to bring out details from individual frames that might have been missed in the automatic stack.
- Resize + Logo using FastStone Resize