Tokina 17mm reversed on a Nikon PB-6 bellows

[480sparky]

For those of you who shoot with bellows, you're probably aware that reversing lenses gets you higher magnification. I've been shooting with an old 28mm 2.8 Ai-S lens for over a year now, and have reached mags close to 7:1. I read Nikon's chart where they stated a 20mm reversed would get to 11:1.

So, just for S&G, I got an adapter ring for my Tokina 17/3.5 SL so I could reverse it on my PB-6 bellows. I set up a US dollar bill, and moved in. This is the top part of a number 5 in the serial number.



I figure I'm at 15:1 here. I'll toss on the extension rings some day and see where that gets me.

[Lloydy]

That's impressive, it's sharper than I would have thought it might be.

[480sparky]

I was surprised as well. The right side is obviously OOF, but this was a single shot and I don't have a motorized focus rail to try a focus stack at this magnification yet. I just thought I'd try it to see what kind of results I would get.

[cooltouch]

Well, your DOF is also probably razor thin, which may account for the right side being somewhat soft.

I like your results. I have a 17mm Tokina-made Vivitar and a set of PB-4 Bellows. And I've got Nikon reversing rings, but I'll have to get a reducing ring to screw on that Vivitar, I reckon. Anyway, it gives me ideas.

The closest I've come to your level of magnification was reverse-mounting a 1/2 inch f/2.5 Wollensak D-mount 8mm movie camera lens to a lens cap (I just glued it to the cap) and then mounting the cap to my 90mm Tamron macro lens. Lets see, I think the formula is you divide the mounted lens number into the lens mounted to the camera, so that would be 90 / ~ 13 or about 7x. That sounds about right. The results were surprisingly sharp, but it was really difficult to use. A focusing rail is a must have.

Years ago, I read an article on using reverse mounted lenses for macro work, and I remember the author stating that one of the nice things about reverse mounting a wide angle lens is it usually has a nice flat field of focus. No curvature the way a non-macro lens would typically be. Something about reverse mounting lens that eliminates the curvature. So that's an additional plus to reverse mounting lenses.

[480sparky]

As promised: Reversed 17mm on the PB-6 bellows with 68mm of Kenko extension tubes.

(I gotta figure out why it's vignetting)



The is the "D" in "AND", in the phrase "THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE".


The setup:







By my poor method of measuring (using an ordinary ruler marked to 1/16"), the letters measure just less then 1/16", so let's say 1/20". That's 1.27mm. Of the 4016-pixel height of the D600 frame, the letter (roughly!) covers 3162 pixels. That's ~18.89mm.

So, last time I went to skule, 18.89 / 1.27 = 14.87 : 1 magnification. Ah, let's just round it off to 15:1 and call it good.