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Bellows and inexpensive enlarger lenses.
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 3:32 pm    Post subject: Bellows and inexpensive enlarger lenses. Reply with quote
I recently bought a smallish Pentacon bellows and some low end enlarger lenses to have a go at macro photography.
The lenses were the Mikar 4,5/55, the Emitar 4,5/80 and the Amar 4,5/105. They are made in Poland.

I got the smaller bellows because I thought it could be used for hand held photography. I have tried using them a little without so
much success yet. It is not so easy to focus them and hold still to get a good shot.
Any tips on using them? Which lens can be used for
which purpose? Thanks for comments.

Last edited by uddhava on Fri Jan 16, 2015 1:52 am; edited 1 time in total


PostPosted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 3:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
I love using bellows. I have a couple of large heavy Russian ones that I use on tripod. For handheld use I have a tiny very light set, I have successfully used enlarger lenses handheld with this, Schneider Componon-S 5.6/100 and Ross Resolux 4/90. Shorter than about 75mm won't reach infinity so macro only.

I don't know anything about those Polish lenses but I expect they are good quality 4 element Tessar types and will work well for experimenting. The lenses to keep an eye out for are Schneider Componons and Rodenstock Rodagons, those are both 6 element types and as good as you will get without spending lots of money. The 100mm lengths are probably the most useful for general purpose photography imho, there are 80 and 100mm Componons and 90 and 100mm Rodagons, any of those is well worth having.

Componon-S 5.6/100 on Canon EOS 10qd, Agfa Copex HDP13 microfilm developed in Kodak Microdol-X:



100% crop, fantastically sharp lens and this microfilm can resolve at least 160lp/mm so can exploit all of the lens resolution, sadly my scanner can only resolve 70lp/mm so can't extract the full resolution contained in the negative:





Ross Resolux 4/90 on Canon EOS 10qd, Kodak Technical Pan developed in Kodak Microdol-X:




Last edited by iangreenhalgh1 on Sat Mar 02, 2013 4:06 pm; edited 1 time in total


PostPosted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 3:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
For macro, definitely use bellows, I didn't really do any macro with my enlarger lenses but I am sure they will work well, the closest to macro I got was this shot with the Componon-S 5.6/100 but I didn't use any lighting so the result was grainy as it was dark in the workshop. 30 year old Ilford FP4 in Kodak Microdol-X:



PostPosted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 4:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
This is the tiny lightweight set of bellows I use handheld, extremely useful for playing with all manner of odd and unusual lenses, often with a liberal application of electrical tape to mount the oddities Smile




PostPosted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 5:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Is the mount of the 100mm Componon M39?


PostPosted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 5:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
iangreenhalgh1 wrote:
This is the tiny lightweight set of bellows I use handheld, extremely useful for playing with all manner of odd and unusual lenses, often with a liberal application of electrical tape to mount the oddities Smile




My bellows doesn't have the ridges that yours has for focusing. I simply loosen a screw and slid the bellows in and out. It is not so
accurate for infinity photography. However, it is fine for macro photography. The problem I have is holding the camera still
enough to keep it from going in and out of focus.


PostPosted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 5:39 pm    Post subject: Re: Bellows and inexpensive enlarger lenses. Reply with quote
uddhava wrote:
I got the smaller bellows because I thought it could be used for hand held photography. I have tried using them a little without so much success yet. It is not so easy to focus them and hold still to get a good shot.
Any tips on using them? Which lens can be used for
which purpose? Thanks for comments.


I've been looking for an Emitar for some time. Tough to find in the US. I have some Amars but the variability in quality is very large, and I still have not figured out how to disassemble these lenses for cleaning. But in general they are sharp enough for general macro work if you have a clean copy.

For your macro focusing problem, you need to make a paradigm shift versus "normal" photography. In normal photography, which I consider anything with subject distance of 4x the lens focal length or farther, you generally focus by adjusting the lens to camera distance. But for macro, it's better to adjust the lens to camera distance ahead of time to set the magnification of the shot based on the size of the subject, and then to fix that distance and adjust focus by moving the camera/lens closer or farther from the subject. This is especially the case for bellows like the Pentacon or some Novoflex that don't have fine adjustments of the lens standard, so focusing in the "normal" way is hit or miss, but even for lenses with good adjustability it's still better to focus the "macro way".


PostPosted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 6:24 pm    Post subject: Re: Bellows and inexpensive enlarger lenses. Reply with quote
Ray Parkhurst wrote:
uddhava wrote:
I got the smaller bellows because I thought it could be used for hand held photography. I have tried using them a little without so much success yet. It is not so easy to focus them and hold still to get a good shot.
Any tips on using them? Which lens can be used for
which purpose? Thanks for comments.


I've been looking for an Emitar for some time. Tough to find in the US. I have some Amars but the variability in quality is very large, and I still have not figured out how to disassemble these lenses for cleaning. But in general they are sharp enough for general macro work if you have a clean copy.

For your macro focusing problem, you need to make a paradigm shift versus "normal" photography. In normal photography, which I consider anything with subject distance of 4x the lens focal length or farther, you generally focus by adjusting the lens to camera distance. But for macro, it's better to adjust the lens to camera distance ahead of time to set the magnification of the shot based on the size of the subject, and then to fix that distance and adjust focus by moving the camera/lens closer or farther from the subject. This is especially the case for bellows like the Pentacon or some Novoflex that don't have fine adjustments of the lens standard, so focusing in the "normal" way is hit or miss, but even for lenses with good adjustability it's still better to focus the "macro way".


Thanks for this advice. My problem is with moving the camera in or out to adjust the focus. That is using it hand held. Maybe it is just a question of practice. Seems easy to miss the focus.


PostPosted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 6:39 pm    Post subject: Re: Bellows and inexpensive enlarger lenses. Reply with quote
uddhava wrote:
Thanks for this advice. My problem is with moving the camera in or out to adjust the focus. That is using it hand held. Maybe it is just a question of practice. Seems easy to miss the focus.


Ahh, so you are doing it the macro way and just seeing the problem of limited DOF? That's just something you must get used to. But in general, anything at 1:2 mag or higher is going to be very difficult to focus handheld. If you have sufficient light for a fast shutter speed, you can try the "passthrough" method, which can also be used to get a sequence of handheld shots for focus stacking. Put your camera in continuous mode and take a sequence of shots from where you know you are OOF on one side to OOF on the other side of the subject. This is the only thing that has worked for me at 1:1 handheld. The compromise is the individual shot sharpness is not as good as it could be due to the higher mirror vibration...


PostPosted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 7:17 pm    Post subject: Re: Bellows and inexpensive enlarger lenses. Reply with quote
Ray Parkhurst wrote:

Ahh, so you are doing it the macro way and just seeing the problem of limited DOF? That's just something you must get used to. But in general, anything at 1:2 mag or higher is going to be very difficult to focus handheld. If you have sufficient light for a fast shutter speed, you can try the "passthrough" method, which can also be used to get a sequence of handheld shots for focus stacking. Put your camera in continuous mode and take a sequence of shots from where you know you are OOF on one side to OOF on the other side of the subject. This is the only thing that has worked for me at 1:1 handheld. The compromise is the individual shot sharpness is not as good as it could be due to the higher mirror vibration...


Yes that's correct! How do you calculate the magnification ratio?


PostPosted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 7:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
For fieldwork with enlarger lenses, I myself use the earliest version of the Asahi Pentax M42 bellows, which are quite compact, even a little more so than iangreenhalgh1's bellows. Of course if I was doing high-magnification stuff, I'd proabably want a stockier bellows, and a tripod, and a macro focusing rail for the reasons Ray brought up.


PostPosted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 8:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Yup, the Componon-S 5.6/100 is M39. My Componon 5.6/80 is M25.


PostPosted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 9:00 pm    Post subject: Re: Bellows and inexpensive enlarger lenses. Reply with quote
Ray Parkhurst wrote:
But in general, anything at 1:2 mag or higher is going to be very difficult to focus handheld. If you have sufficient light for a fast shutter speed, you can try the "passthrough" method, which can also be used to get a sequence of handheld shots for focus stacking. Put your camera in continuous mode and take a sequence of shots from where you know you are OOF on one side to OOF on the other side of the subject. This is the only thing that has worked for me at 1:1 handheld. The compromise is the individual shot sharpness is not as good as it could be due to the higher mirror vibration...


Ray, sorry not to agree but I don't agree with you. I have thousands of flower and insect and live fish in aquaria shots taken with, usually, a 105/2.8 MicroNikkor AIS, sometimes on its own mount, sometimes on a PN-11 tube. Focusing and staying focused on fish in aquaria isn't easy; much of that art, though, is in managing and training the fish. Insects, even insects that are wary of close approach, aren't that hard and flowers are downright easy.

It takes practice. Practice focusing and composing, practice releasing the shutter, practice stalking. I've done nearly all of my closeup work with flash illumination, which makes everything much easier.

Re flash, I have a number of flash rigs. They fall into two categories. Flash on rigid bracket attached to the camera body. Flash on bracket attached to the lens. I have two apparently dissimilar brackets for attaching small flashes to a lens, Spiratone MacroDapter and Jones of Hollywood macro brackets. Both are functionally equivalent, with one important difference: the Jones bracket can be used with a 55 MicroNikkor, the Macrodapter can't (it puts the flashes behind the subject).

I can't imagine shooting closeup handheld with illumination by ambient darkness. Flash stops motion and with KM (ISO 25) completely overpowers ambient at my preferred apertures. Photographers more modern than I am don't appreciate what a slow film makes possible. I have using ND filters, but since KM went away am stuck with 'em.

About my success rate. Do you know Vivek Iyer? Years ago he gave me a hard time about all this, didn't believe my gear worked as well as I claimed. Not unreasonable of him, if I didn't know better I wouldn't believe my claims. So I sent him a box of KM flower and insect shots, fresh back from the lab, unculled. Every shot was well exposed, all but one or two were in good focus and composed well. His response was to the effect that I knew enough to do whatever I wanted and that I never missed a shot.

One advantage of the rigs I described above over rigs that contain the typical bellows is that in mine the lens stays open until the shot is taken, stops down when I push the button and reopens very soon after. With bellows rigs, one works at shooting aperture or loses focus and composition when stopping the lens down. IMO they can be used only from tripod. Bellows with automatic stop-down are another matter entirely, but I don't have one.

I'm working very slowly on an article, tentative title "Shooting at and below ground level," that I hope to publish eventually on galerie-photo.info. It will discuss shooting flowers and such with LF gear; this involves much the same problems as shooting with a 35 mm SLR or digicam hung behind a bellows. By the way, "at ground level" means "with the lens' optical axis at ground level" and "at" means at, not some distance above. One has to dig to get the lens that low.

Cheers,

Dan
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