What's your favorite walk-around macro?

[wolan]

I use the rare Porst Color MCM 55mm f1.7

Cheers.

[Big Dawg]

I recently purchased a Sigma 105 macro. It is an auto focus but I use it in manual most of the time and it does well on my Pentax K1 camera.

[pdccameras]

Now that's more like it!

Great shots, Big Dawg.

Like many of you have said, I have a soft spot for macros as well - perhaps because they let me take photos of subjects that don't move around too much most of the time in a controlled situation.

My percentage of handheld/light tripod keepers seems to be pretty high with the 100mm F/4 SMC takumar

However, Klaus, in answer to your question: "Hmm, so no-one uses the (famous) ZEISS S-Planar 60mm or 100mm?
Or the even more famous CV Apo Lanthar 2.5/125mm ???"

I do have a copy of the CV Apo Lanthar 2.5/125mm, but sometimes I'm afraid to take out and play - and it really deserves a good tripod! Here are some shots I took with it today on the Canon 5D RS. It's a spectacular lens - I'd hate to get it dirty.




#1


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#6

[visualopsins]

APO Lanthars & Zeiss S-Planars cost multiple times the others, these days.

Canon MP-E anybody?

[Ray Parkhurst]

[Mir]

[piggsy]

Yeah, the 125 APO Lanth is my dream lens, and there it will probably remain - I can't ever see myself spending what they go for now!

While I really like the Bokina, lately I've been using the Tamron 180mm F3.5 macro as my main walkabout macro lens - adapted as a manual lens from nikon mount, since that has manual aperture. The flexibility of it is insane, and other than some very minor fringing at 3.5 on very harsh white edges it has essentially no flaws I've ever seen. Although, that said, my use of it really hangs from a few things - the Olympus IBIS, which makes a 360mm birding/235mm macro lens usable, neat image to denoise flashless shots (none of these are with a flash), and focus stacking to make it usable for macro purposes at 3.5/5.6. But just being able to go from this -



or this



to this



or this



without swapping a lens or using a diopter or anything - that is pretty neat.

Just to delve deeper - here's what ISO1600, wide open at 3.5, looks like with some post -



and by messing with focus stacking you can create shots with moving subjects that would be a stretch even at very steep f-stops, but you're shooting at 1/200 / ISO500 -



Still like my other lenses (I've been taking the Vivitar S1 90/2.5 out a bunch in the hopes of building some stuff to show that off also) and my Olympus 60 is great for cross polarised flash stuff, but when you don't know if there are going to be birds or bugs or whatever to shoot, the Tamron 180 is pretty much the thing to take.

Also to add, out of focus behaviour on it, given it's 3.5 on m43, is at times quite nice indeed -

[pdccameras]

[quote="piggsy"]Yeah, the 125 APO Lanth is my dream lens, and there it will probably remain - I can't ever see myself spending what they go for now!
.... lately I've been using the Tamron 180mm F3.5 macro as my main walkabout macro lens

With beautiful results like these, why would you want anything else? Incredible shots!

Paul

[kds315*]

pretty amazing shots you got with your Tamron 180mm macro!!!

[Spokklocka]

Some nice photos in this thread : )

It's interesting to hear about people's experience. I typically do macro without a tripod or rails, though sometimes with a muted flash and have in the past availed of a Minolta AF 100 2,8 which I like optically and worked great on an A-mount camera with IS.

Nowadays there's no A-mount camera anymore, just E, and using it via an LA-EA hasn't been a great user experience, so am selling my 50 and 100mm A-mount AF macros and am pondering on what to replace them with.

50ish is easier (cheaper) and will probably be a Nikkor 55 2,8 while ~100..curiously the FE 100 macro is close to the cost of a used A7ii (have an A7 at the moment)..stabilized lens for unstabilized body or stabilized body for any unstabilized mf lens, hmm.

[visualopsins]

[noddywithoutbigears]

Panagor 55mm f2.8 for me, use it as my walk around lens when I may want some macro shots. Great performance and not too heavy or cumbersome on my Fuji X-T10, it's the same lens as the Vivitar 55mm macro.

[Ray Parkhurst]

[visualopsins]

[cooltouch]

You know, all this discussion has reminded me of something that I believe I've mentioned before here.

John Shaw, a very well-known nature photographer here in the US, has published a series of books over the years. I have a few that date back to the 1980s I guess. In one of his books he discusses how he got somee high magnification shots. He shoots (shot) exclusively with Nikon gear and used Kodachrome 25 almost exclusively. So his macro shots always had great detail.

Anyway, to capture many of these shots, he would mount two lenses of different focal lengths together, but what he would do is reverse mount the shorter focal length lens onto the longer one. This required an adapter ring that was threaded on both sides. It makes things simpler if both lenses have the same filter diameter. This method is called "stacking." So, for example, Shaw would do things like mount a 50mm lens, reversed, to a 135mm lens. The magnification calculation is straight forward. Just divide the primary lens (the one attached to the camera) focal length by the secondary lens focal length. With the above example, the magnification ratio would be 2.7:1. Not too shabby, eh? And as you can quickly see, the wider the secondary lens is, the greater the magnification.

The great thing about stacking lenses is we all have more than one lens. All we need is a lens-to-lens adapter, which is easy enough to come by these days. One nice thing about the major camera/lens makers was they tended to keep the same filter size across a wide range of their optics, so this makes for easy stacking.

[Himself]

[piggsy]

[Ray Parkhurst]

[quote="Himself"]

[Himself]

[Dane03]

[kds315*]

[Dane03]

That's the problem with the Zeiss, it's really sharp even wide-open. But it can cause CA a lot.
There, and not only there, the APO Lanthar really shines. But there must be a reason for the
price tag, so I'm fine with that

[visualopsins]

[Mike Deep]

For the longest time the Vivitar Series 1 90mm was my go-to. I still prefer it's look.

But now the Canon 100L has taken over. Paired with the Life Size Converter, the lens is something like 170mm, and it achieves greater than 2:1 while still being able to focus out to six feet or so. With image stabilization to boot.

[Ray Parkhurst]