Better for Macro, Large or Medium?

Hi

I have two opportunities for macro and close up photography:

1. Bronica SQ-B with 110mm 4.5 macro lens and auto bellows.
2. Sinar F2 4x5, with 490mm of bellows and Nikon 120mm 5.6 AM ED macro lens.

Currently, I only have the Sonar's bellows and the cameras above.

Advanced thank you.

Both are good choices but using the Sinar just sounds like so much more fun. Beside it will give you more skills than with the Bronica.

The more magnification the less depth of field*. If you want very shallow depth of field, use large format. Otherwise, a small format is better.

*Example, if you want a quarter to fill the frame, a Minox camera will need maybe 0.25X magnification, while an 8x10 camera will need about 10X.

What ic-racer says, with one qualification.
Are you looking to photograph flat objects, or are you looking to get really close to objects that are full of shapes and curves and angles?
For the latter, sometimes having movements that allow you to adjust the plane of focus can be valuable. And a "macro" lens may not be necessary, because the criteria that makes a lens a "macro" lens is mostly related to its flat field performance.
In that latter case, a view camera with a roll film back and a shorter lens may give you more depth of field and movements and be a better option.

MattKing said:

What ic-racer says, with one qualification.
Are you looking to photograph flat objects, or are you looking to get really close to objects that are full of shapes and curves and angles?
For the latter, sometimes having movements that allow you to adjust the plane of focus can be valuable. And a "macro" lens may not be necessary, because the criteria that makes a lens a "macro" lens is mostly related to its flat field performance.
In that latter case, a view camera with a roll film back and a shorter lens may give you more depth of field and movements and be a better option.

Click to expand...

The subject, pebbles and small jewelry.

Darryl Roberts said:

The subject, pebbles and small jewelry.

Click to expand...

Go for 35mm macro instead - depth of field will matter more with jewelry.

I own the 120mm AM-Nikkor, a Pentax 645 120mm macro lens, and several 35mm macro lenses. For pebbles, I'm not sure you gain a whole lot with large format. At 490mm of draw, you can achieve 4:1 magnification, but that means that you need a 1" pebble to fill the frame. At an effective aperture of, say, f/90, you'd still only have about 5mm of DOF to work with.

Jewelry, on the other hand, can mean anything in size from a stud earring up to something like a squash blossom necklace. I'd love to shoot the latter with 4x5", but 490mm of draw is clearly overkill for that. I've used my AM-Nikkor for large flowers such as rhododendrons and amaryllis, but nothing smaller. I've mostly used my Pentax for larger coins, such as US $20 gold pieces.

I don't know your level of experience with macro nor what other gear you own. But for general use, 35mm close-up photography is somewhat more forgiving, uses less expensive gear, costs less per shot, and still provides an interesting level of detail. Unless I had a specific use case, I'd choose medium format over large format for much the same reasons.

I've tried macro both ways. In general, for magnification close to 1:1 I find the view so dim through a Graphic View 4x5, a loupe, and a typical f5.6 lens that I just stop down to f32 and hope for the best, let alone get fancy with tilt movements. For jewelry and single pebbles, I don't think movements can do much as these are rounded subjects. I have a Bronica and the 110mm f4.5 lens, and it's a pleasure to use, especially low table-top macro with the waist-level finder. If you do a lot, I suggest finding a plain ground glass screen, as the split-image microprism spot on the standard screen goes dark at f4.5, so you can't focus using the middle. Here's a near-macro, maybe about 1:3, with the Zenzanon 110mm f4.5. I usually stop down to f16 with it.

Untitled by Howard Sandler, on Flickr

hsandler said:

I've tried macro both ways. In general, for magnification close to 1:1 I find the view so dim through a Graphic View 4x5, a loupe, and a typical f5.6 lens that I just stop down to f32 and hope for the best, let alone get fancy with tilt movements. For jewelry and single pebbles, I don't think movements can do much as these are rounded subjects. I have a Bronica and the 110mm f4.5 lens, and it's a pleasure to use, especially low table-top macro with the waist-level finder. If you do a lot, I suggest finding a plain ground glass screen, as the split-image microprism spot on the standard screen goes dark at f4.5, so you can't focus using the middle. Here's a near-macro, maybe about 1:3, with the Zenzanon 110mm f4.5. I usually stop down to f16 with it.

Untitled by Howard Sandler, on Flickr

Click to expand...

Awesome information and example. Thank you

I used 35 mm beginning in the mid 70's. I bought several books available then on macro or micro photography. I first learned that a good tripod was more important than format size. I graduated to medium format, both 6x4.5 and 6x7. I even experimented with my Rollei TLR with one of their close-up attachment lens. Unless I was going to do all my close work in a studio, I eschewed the large format. The Pentax 6x7 with the Pentax macro lens will produce superb negatives or transparencies for enlargement and printing. I had many clients who regularly bought one-time rights for my 35 mm macro work.

I did some macro on 4"x5" with my Linhof Kardan GT and the Hasselblad's S-Planar 120mm on it with an adapter.
Great combo and the MF lens performed very wel and filled the 4"x5" due to the close up's long bellows extension, but not that long as it should with a LF lens.
Perhaps you can use the Bronica's macro lens...
Anyway, MF macro is fantastic too.

I'd stick to the medium format with the macro stuff you're talking about. I also have that Nikkor 120 AM lens and while it is great for large format macro, I try not to get much closer than 1:1 with it (that keeps it at large-ish flowers and the like). Not because of any shortfall of the lens, but because large format gets awkward beyond that point.

The smaller the format, the easier macro work is, but the same focal length lens at the same aperture will give you the same DOF at the same magnification regardless of the film format. The difference is that with larger film you don't have to enlarge as much to make the same sized print, so you have greater resolution -- just like in non-macro work.

But like I said, the smaller the format, the easier macro work is.

Smaller format will be much easier to use, focus and minimize vibration for pebbles and jewelry.
At 1:1 using the same focal length vibrations get increasingly higher if using constant lighting with larger cameras.
35mm is manageable. Bronica is somewhat manageable as well without extension on bellows. For bigger formats, strobes make a big difference. Strong light will still be needed for precise focusing with larger formats.
85mm tilt shift lenses were made for this kind of work. With 35mm, these regular macro lenses perform extremely well at 0.5x magnification or less.

Sinar F2 will also work great. The same as Bronica if roll back is used. Roll back is probably recommended solution here since magnification to fill the frame will be smaller than filling 4x5 and lens like 120mm Nikkor will perform well at smaller magnifications. If you have Sinar Copal shutter, that would open possibility to use some other lenses on it as well as using d*****l back on it. It can be also upgraded to geared P2 while using all accessories if more precision (ease of use) is needed.

Bronica will be more portable and easier to use.