Macro Lens Comparison

patrickh · Expire: 2011-11-18

Personally, I think any discussion of macro should include the incredible enlarging lenses available for relative peanuts. El nikkor, rodenstock rodagon and schneider componon are all incredibly sharp and mainly have superior color rendition. The only shortcoming - if it really is one - is the fact that they are all slow lenses (2.8 to 5.6 being normal). Typically available for less than $100 they are definitely comparable to any lens listed in this thread.

patrickh

patrickh · Expire: 2011-11-18

Sample from an el nikkor 135/5.6 for which I paid all of $35:

patrickh

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

Yeah, the enlarging lenses are worth adding into the mix. In retrospect, I wish I would have kept mine. When I sold off all my darkroom stuff about six years ago, it included an EL Nikkor, a Schneider, and a Rodenstock in various focal lengths. I put them up on eBay, and they sold for peanuts. I still feel a bit of pain when I think of it.

Boomer Depp · Expire: 2011-12-04

Boomer Depp · Expire: 2011-12-04

Sometimes resolution is not the desired effect...yesterday,I wanted to accent the sweeping colors and not have resolution distract from the image....detail draws you into the images...and here I don't want the viewer scrutinizing the image for detail,but rather the overall effect of the sweep of the color.

I still didn't quite get the image I wanted yesterday,perhaps when I give it another try today,I'll throw it a wee bit more out of focus.

Micro-Nikkor 55/2.8

Boomer Depp · Expire: 2011-12-04

Revisited yesterday with a Kiron 105mm f2.8 Macro

A few from last summer....

and one from last week.

Boomer Depp · Expire: 2011-12-04

Vivitar Series 1 90mm f2.5 Macro

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

Dang, after the hard freeze we had here a few weeks ago, the only flowers blooming around here are white azaleas. And white flowers are boring.

Vivitar 105mm f/2.5 macro @ f/5.6

Boomer Depp · Expire: 2011-12-04

Odd weather this year in the Pacific Northwest as well,January was the dryest on record and that's usually one of our wettest months.Usually when it's that dry we get deep hard freezes,but we had very few freezing nights and hardly no freezing during the day this winter...except for a couple days freeze in December.When there is little rain here,it also means very little snowfall in the mountains...not a good thing for the big cities that depend on a good melting snow pack to keep the reservoirs full in the summer.

The crocus and primroses have about done there thing and are about done.Forsythia are blooming,grape hyacinth and pulminaria are starting to bud.Didn't get any great captures,but got some so so captures.

Forsynthia don't have a lot of texture and the detail is blown out like white flowers....I should have been right in close and personal with the lens stopped way down....but shot further out with the lens wide open...
taken with the Kiron 205/2.8

Some of the younger crocus which haven't bloomed,will bloom this week....but most of the crocus that bloomed the past week and a half,are beginning to show their age....not quite the beauty they once were...but still an eye catcher none-the-less....stopped down a bit to f5.6 doesn't give the creamy bokeh of 2.8.

A late bloomer...

The primroses though battle scarred are always an interesting capture because the contrast in color seems to bring out the 3D effect...moving in closer seems to help with the 3d,but even with a longer lens it's still there somewhat.

Vivitar 28mm f2.8 Close Focus-taken last week-

Kiron 105mm f2.8 wide open-yesterday

Kiron 105mm f2.8 @f11-yesterday-

Vivitar S1 90mmf2.5 stopped down a bit....so not much creamy bokeh-taken last week-

The grape hyacinth will be a deep blue after they bloom,surprised to see them budding a couple weeks early.

Vivitar S1 90mm f2.5

Kiron 105mm f2.8

The Dutch Iris aren't qute as long lived as the other Iris variations.

Kiron 105mm f2.8

Now for the weather....which has gone from squalls to sun to rain the past month....looking like this a lot....

to like this at times....

Russ · Joined: 26 Feb 2007 Posts: 432

Where were the last two made?

Boomer Depp · Expire: 2011-12-04

The first is the old resort village of Hansville by Point No Point at the south end of Admiralty Inlet,just north of the Puget Sound...about 10 miles north of my home.
The second pic is Appletree Cove next to Kingston on the Puget Sound and close to my home....we keep our boats at the marina on the left,which makes it quite convenient.

Russ · Joined: 26 Feb 2007 Posts: 432

Cool. I'm down here in Vancouver, WA. For whatever reason, my results with the Kiron 105 macro seam to be considerably sharper. I'll have to scan and submit them.

Boomer Depp · Expire: 2011-12-04

That would be neat,would love to see them....but please don't make us wait like you have,for the list of all the Vivitar manufacturers.... Laughing

Over the years I've done a bit of flower photography with and for my wife....wasn't til last summer with a bit more time on my hands,now that I'm retired,that I really seriously got into flower photography.

Last year I worked more on trying to make an interesting capture with thought about composition in flower photography doing hand held shots....rather then my old style of just taking a picture of a flower or use flowers and plants as the foreground subject of a picture.This year it will also be about using a tripod more,especially if I have a macro lens mounted.

But as I said at the top of this page...using a macro isn't always about high detail macro work or having the sharpest image,but rather what the photographer is looking to achieve when he composes an image.

Obviously in high magnification macro photography the detail you try to achieve with a sharp high resolution image quite often is sought,but even stopping down you don't gain high resolution across the whole image.

Another thing I was working on last year was HDR and when I was checking out different web pages on techniques photographers used...I stumbled upon an interesting way to get a highly detailed image with high resolution across the whole image...by taking a series of pics with resolution progressing across the subject and then stacking the images to obtain high resolution across the whole subject being captured...the author called this stacking...I'm planning on giving that a go as well some time this year.

Here is a short vid on focus stacking for those who might find this interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJiEw4VCcYU

Also a thread on focus stacking on another board
http://www.digitalgrin.com/showthread.php?t=61316

The freeware Program combinez5 to do this available from here....
http://www.flickr.com/groups/combinez5/

Helicon Focus software
http://www.heliconsoft.com/focus_downloads.html

Luminous Landscape's article on Helicon Focus
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/Helicon.shtml

Photoshop CS4 can also be used for stacking
1) File>>scripts>>Load files into stack, making sure you check "attempt to align layers" box
2)Once loaded, Edit>> auto blend layers

justtorchit · Joined: 12 Oct 2009 Posts: 269 Location: St. Louis, MO

I have used helicon focus. You can do a 30 day free trial, $30 1 year license or $200 I believe for unlimited. After stacking things in photoshop manually, programs like this are a godsend. It truly doesn't get any easier than this!

Made this image with something like 23 frames stacked:

It truly is great. I can't wait until spring and all the flora comes back to life!

Boomer Depp · Expire: 2011-12-04

Very nicely done,David!!! Very Happy

So David do you stack photos within PS CS 4 first and crop the photo so that Helicon doesn't end up having to work with the edges.