My New Macro Toys

[cooltouch]

I've had these two items on my "to-buy" list for quite a while: a macro bellows with slide duplicator and a macro stage. Here's the rig, complete with my 55/3.5 Micro Nikkor and EOS XS:



I bought the macro stage from the Hong Kong eBay seller fotocola2000. It's new, and I asked the seller a couple of questions before I bought it, the chief one being, was it made out of metal? It was -- actually, metal and rubberized metal. And it is actually surprisingly well made. Well worth the $45 price. Shipping was free, but it took forever to get here.



More recently, I spotted the Vivitar bellows with slide duplicator on eBay. Very clean looking and in Nikon mount. It hadn't attracted much attention, which I found somewhat surprising. Often a good set of bellows with the slide duplicator attachment will fetch $100 or more. This one was sitting at $25 with just minutes left before auction close, so I decided to go for it. Got it for $41, which I consider to be a great price.



This is a very well made bellows outfit. Its only drawback is the slide duplicator's slide mount is fixed. With many SD attachments, the slide/film mount can be moved up and down and side to side, which aids in cropping an image. Oh well, I'm not complaining for $41. I can probably rig something up with my lathe and/or milling machine that will allow me to do this.

I have discussed my slide duplicating rig here before. It is an assembly I've cobbled together from a few different pieces of gear -- an Opteka slide duplicator tube, a stage from an old Cambron zoom slide duplicator plus the roll-film stage accessory, and a set of extension tubes, all of which I attach to my 55mm Micro Nikkor. It's a bit unweildy, and not easy for another person to replicate, but it does work very well:



I was hoping that the distance between the lens mount at the front of the bellows and the camera mount at the rear of the bellows would be equal to or less than the distance I use with my extension tubes so I could use the bellows for dupes instead of my existing contraption, but this was not to be -- it's about 1 cm greater with the bellows when they're collapsed all the way. So 1:1 dupes of slides and negatives using the bellows with my 55mm Micro-Nikkor and crop-body EOS are not possible. However, it might be possible with a 35mm or 28mm lens. The bellows will work fine if/when I want to crop images from my slides or negs. Providing I can position them where I want.

But the main reason why I bought the bellows was so I could do some quality high-magnification photography. And I've learned from field experience that this is where a macro focusing stage becomes practically a necessity. It's much easier to precisely frame an image and achieve correct focus when the bellows is mounted to a macro-focusing stage out in the field than trying to do the same when its mounted to "just" a tripod. When working in the studio, or any controlled environment, a stage is not as critical, but when one is trying to grab nature shots at high magnification, a good stage is can make all the difference.

Here's a quick cropped duplicate of a slide I took with my Canon F-1 and FD 85mm f/1.2 SSC Aspherical. Probably not the best example, but it was handy.



You know those Chinese boxes that are padded and have cloth exteriors that are woven in different designs? Well, here's a macro shot of the weave on one box. Canon XS/1000D, Vivitar 105mm f/2.5 @ f/8, ringlight flash.



And here's what the rig looked like for that shot:



This should be fun. Hopefully I'll have some good subjects to put up over at the Macro Contests forum.

[ludoo]

Very nice, especially the slide copier/bellows. I've read around that the optimal focal length for slide copiers on crop bodies is 75mm, as it allows you to move the slide away enough to get full coverage but still staying within the limits of the copier bellows extension.

I managed to get hold of a cheap Pentax slide copier a few months ago, but I'm still waiting for a cheap Auto Bellows on which to mount it. I'm thinking of building my own base with wood where I can fix the camera and copier, as I did a few tests mounting my Flektogon 35mm on a 12mm extension tube, and it's perfect for 100% coverage of a slide or neg, but won't work with the Auto Bellows as 12mm is too short.

[ludoo]

I almost forgot, this might help in pinpointing the right focal length to use with your slide copier.

http://www.mystd.de/album/calculator/

[mo]

Incredible set up....What is the flash?

[cooltouch]

[cooltouch]

Mo, the flash is a Yuzo brand, a model DC2814. The flash came with the Vivitar 105/2.5 Macro. It, the lens, and a Nikon N60 were offered as a dental photography outfit by Photomed International. I hadn't heard of this brand of flash prior to picking up the combination, but it appears to be well made and works very well.

After I picked it up, I've done occasional internet seaches on it to find out more information. Found a pdf file for the users manual, and a couple of eBay listings.

The DC2814 has a removable dedicated module. Mine is for Nikon TTL, and the contacts on it coincide with a couple on my Canon. They end up confusing my camera, so I had to put tape over all the Nikon TTL contacts, just leaving the center one bare. I would really like to find a TTL module dedicated for Canon. It still won't offer TTL metering with my EOS DSLR because the metering methods have changed, so really it's useful only in manual mode. But at least the contacts match and it won't play hell with the camera. Besides, I do own an older EOS film camera -- an Elan IIe -- and it will operate in TTL mode with that camera.

Here's a non-TTL version on eBay:
Click here to see on Ebay

[ludoo]

Michael, 75mm are pretty common in the enlarging world, and nowadays cheap too.

I went to a wood store today, and after some quick calculations I think an auto bellows will cost me about the same, diy materials are really expensive here. As for the slide copier, I have the original Pentax one that mounts onto their Auto Bellows (but not the plain M42 Bellows I have, or the Bellows II, which is confusing), so I will look for one.

Your original thread about slide copying with a DSLR from last year was what prompted me to sell my scanner, but I still have not managed to assemble a rig to replace it.