Large format macro

Has anyone done macro photography with a large format camera? If I'm not mistaken, Karl Blossfeldt shot macro with an 8x10 camera (I could be wrong about that), but I haven't seen anyone else do a macro shoot with a 4x5 or an 8x10. If anyone has tried it, please share your experiences.

Thanks

We had a monthly photo challenge on macro a while back, and I posted a 4x5" example in the gallery with a photo of the setup in the comments.

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Not really macro, but I did a series of 4x5 and 5x7 Butterfly photographs for a school project with a Korona. The bellows factor was monumental, as I had them all the way out at the full 32-34 inches for this with my 162mm Raptar. Not the ideal set up, but it was what I had. The exposures were several minutes at least, and I had to do it when no one else was around because any walking around would shake the camera and blur the image. It was more or less a case of opening the shutter and then sitting down to watch some TV while it cooked . The calculator dial on the LunaPro-F made it all a hell of a lot easier.

Karl Blossfeldt did work macro with large format cameras which he buillt. Another photographer doing macro work with large format was Andreas Feininger. There is an interesting image in one of his books photographing a spider "in the wild," with a 5"x7" with a 4' bellows. The Keartons also had some macro work with large format. I haven't seen contemporary photographers using that approach.

Peter Rockstroh01 said:

Karl Blossfeldt did work macro with large format cameras which he buillt. Another photographer doing macro work with large format was Andreas Feininger. There is an interesting image in one of his books photographing a spider "in the wild," with a 5"x7" with a 4' bellows. The Keartons also had some macro work with large format. I haven't seen contemporary photographers using that approach.

Click to expand...

Speaking of Andreas Feininger... This is a great episode and shows him making macro shots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23UjjfnlDDc

I sometimes do LF macro with 4/5 and 5/7 ...it's fun .. can be tricky,
but fun
I've used both bellows as well as home made close up attachments ..
with bellows you really need to know bellows factor info ..
with an attachment, not so much ..

have fun!
john

As has been mentioned, its been done. As has not been mentioned, if the subject isn't nailed down ensuring that the plane of best focus is where wanted is very difficult. For example, shooting flowers out-of-doors. The slightest breeze can ruin the shot.

Dan Fromm said:

As has not been mentioned, if the subject isn't nailed down ensuring that the plane of best focus is where wanted is very difficult.

Click to expand...

I've posted a couple of fish eye shots in the gallery in the past, and also a few "hood ornaments"/ car mascots - The larger the magnification, the thinner the depth of field, so it does indeed help to have everything nailed down. Another problem with macro is getting sufficient illumination on the subject along with the probability that reciprocity failure will start to kick in.

Yes, macro can be done with LF, and it is kinda fun in a perverse sort of way

yes.
I've got a few here:https://www.flickr.com/photos/62218065@N00/sets/72157606715793329/
Plenty to see on the web if you look.

I haven't used it much at all but I do have a Nikon 120mm Apo-Macro lens that barely covers 4x5 at infinity, but covers 5x7 at macro distances. If you're in to that kind of photography it's amazing, especially when viewing a 4x5 transparency of a flower at 1:1 or greater.

Bill Burk said:

Speaking of Andreas Feininger... This is a great episode and shows him making macro shots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23UjjfnlDDc

Click to expand...

That's a great series. If you notice, Andreas Feininger had his groundglass masked, so my guess is that he was cropping from a 4x5 into a considerably smaller image. That's all well and good, but that defeats the purpose because you may as well use a med format camera, which would be much easier to use and more flexible in terms of macro.

Whereas technically a 4x5 subject shot on a 4x5 camera would yield a 1:1 ratio, thus qualifying as "macro", you really need to do 5:1 or 10:1 to get the types of results you'd get at 1:1 on a med format frame. So, the practical aspect is very different on a LF camera to achieve the types of results I would be looking for. How do you focus at 5:1 or 10:1? The groundglass would be completely dark. How do you make your camera more or less flexible in terms of moving it? With the amount of extension needed, it would look like a freight train.

You just use more light for focusing. A bright LED flashlight will do, if it's close enough. I've also used the modeling lights from my studio strobes. Strobes help keep things sharp as well, if the setup isn't solid enough to tolerate a long exposure.

In case you can't see the shot I linked to in the gallery, here's the photo showing the surface of a cactus. Magnification ratio is about 10x. The lens is a Canon FD 35mm f:2.8 macrophoto. The camera is a 4x5" Linhof Tech V. The film is Type 55, and the exposure is 16 minutes at f:11, with an additional 25% development time to keep up the contrast--



The setup hardly looks like a freight train, if you use a short lens. This one's mounted on a cone that Linhof made for macro lenses like the Zeiss Luminars and Leitz Photars--



I own a Linhof macro focusing rail, but I also have a long Arca-Swiss-type QR plate on the bed of this camera lined up with a short one on the body in the fore-aft position, so that with a long A-S-type clamp, I can slide the camera back and forth. It's not as precise as the geared macro rail, but it works to focus even at this magnification.

Thank you, Dave! That's fantastic! Good stuff! How much of an extension do you need to ensure the Canon FD lens has a big enough image circle to cover the 4x5 frame?

PMFJI. See http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/companies/canon/fdresources/fdlenses/fdmacro/2035macro.htm

Um, bifcake, what do you have in mind to do? In particular, at what range of magnifications would you like to shoot?

I haven't measured, but in the photo of the setup above, I'd guess there's around 10" total extension with the macro cone, the main purpose of which is to make more room for lighting and to avoid casting a shadow on the subject, but it covers 4x5" at smaller extensions. For macro purposes, you can use lenses for 35mm and medium format cameras, as long as you have a way of controlling the aperture and physically mounting the lens to the camera. Most 4x5" cameras have 12-18" extension without adding extra standards and bellows (or using a larger, sturdier camera with a reducing back), so if you don't have lots of extension on your camera, you use a shorter lens. At a certain point there's a tradeoff between using a longer lens to get more distance between the lens and the subject and the inconvenience of working with a really long camera that might require two tripods.

See the page that Dan references for the specs on the FD 35/2.8 macrophoto.

I shoot glass pieces, portions of the glass figurines at high magnification in either full frame digital or med format film. I want to be able to do the same thing in LF in order to have the ability to make really large prints. I work at around 2-5X magnification ratios in 35mm and about 4-7x in med format. I want to be able to get the same part of the figurine to fill the 4x5 or even an 8x10 frame.

BTW, my name is Alexander

I frequently do larger than 1-1 on 8x10 with a 355 Red dot artar. I put a diopter (close up filter) on the rear element and get very good results. I can't currently look at my own APUG gallery but if you go there and look at "scribble" it is significantly larger than 1-1 with the artar and diopter. Using the diopter vastly shortens the need for long bellows.

David A. Goldfarb said:

For macro purposes, you can use lenses for 35mm and medium format cameras, as long as you have a way of controlling the aperture and physically mounting the lens to the camera.

Click to expand...

David, all of these lenses have to be reversed for work above 1:1. I've tested and very occasionally use a 55/2.8 MicroNikkor for this. Reversed, attached to a #1 shutter with an SKGrimes adapter and with a Nikon BR-4 on the lens' mount. The BR-4 isn't really needed, the lens' best aperture in this application is f/4. I'm not familiar with other 35 mm or medium format systems but am confident that most of them have lenses etc. that can be used in the same way. FWIW, a poster on the French LF says that a 55/3.5 Nikkor does better in this application than an f/2.8er.

David A. Goldfarb said:

Most 4x5" cameras have 12-18" extension without adding extra standards and bellows (or using a larger, sturdier camera with a reducing back), so if you don't have lots of extension on your camera, you use a shorter lens. At a certain point there's a tradeoff between using a longer lens to get more distance between the lens and the subject and the inconvenience of working with a really long camera that might require two tripods.

Click to expand...

Depends on the camera and system. One of the charms of square rail Cambos is that 1"x1" 80/20 brand t-slotted extrusions work perfectly well with square rail Cambo standards and are available up to 96" long at very low prices. For anything longer than around 48", though, two tripods are needed.

bifcake said:

I shoot glass pieces, portions of the glass figurines at high magnification in either full frame digital or med format film. I want to be able to do the same thing in LF in order to have the ability to make really large prints. I work at around 2-5X magnification ratios in 35mm and about 4-7x in med format. I want to be able to get the same part of the figurine to fill the 4x5 or even an 8x10 frame.

Click to expand...

Alexander, it sounds like you want to shoot at perhaps 15:1 on 4x5 and 30:1 on 8x10. The lenses typically used to get these magnifications have short focal lengths (12/1.9 Photar, 16/2.8 Luminar, 19/2.8 MacroNikkor) and will give you short working distances.

At these magnifications you'll need considerable extension; the magic formula is extension (more-or-less center of lens to film distance) = magnification * (1 + focal length). Depth of field will be nil with the lens wide open and stopping down will gain nothing of diffraction.

Focus stacking with a 24x36 chip digital SLR may be your best choice. Focus stacking with larger formats is physically possible but expensive and very hard to pull off. Think harder about what you really have to deliver before investing in specialized lenses for photomacrography and large format gear.

I should have said that I meant 35mm and medium format macro lenses on large format. Best to test to see if they work better in the normal orientation or reversed. I used to use my Tamron SP 90/2.5 macro with an adapter (Frank Marshman made a really thin FD/Bronica bayonet adapter out of spare parts for me once) and the tilt/shift bellows on my Bronica S2a occasionally, and I tested it once on 4x5" using some sort of temporary mounting system. On 6x6, the normal orientation worked.

When I was testing reversed normal lenses for macro, I found that simpler was often better. I got noticably better results with the cheap FD 50/1.8 than with the mid-priced 50/1.4 or the expensive 50/1.2L. Didn't try them on 4x5, but there's no reason they shouldn't work with enough magnification.

Dan Fromm said:

Alexander, it sounds like you want to shoot at perhaps 15:1 on 4x5 and 30:1 on 8x10. The lenses typically used to get these magnifications have short focal lengths (12/1.9 Photar, 16/2.8 Luminar, 19/2.8 MacroNikkor) and will give you short working distances.

At these magnifications you'll need considerable extension; the magic formula is extension (more-or-less center of lens to film distance) = magnification * (1 + focal length). Depth of field will be nil with the lens wide open and stopping down will gain nothing of diffraction.

Focus stacking with a 24x36 chip digital SLR may be your best choice. Focus stacking with larger formats is physically possible but expensive and very hard to pull off. Think harder about what you really have to deliver before investing in specialized lenses for photomacrography and large format gear.

Click to expand...

Thanks, Dan. That was very helpful.

David A. Goldfarb said:

When I was testing reversed normal lenses for macro, I found that simpler was often better. I got noticably better results with the cheap FD 50/1.8 than with the mid-priced 50/1.4 or the expensive 50/1.2L.

Click to expand...

Might be worth trying a couple of enlarging lenses first. A 50mm lens with a 39mm LTM thread would be fairly easy to mount on just about any lens board - if you wanted to try reversing it, mount the lens on the board so that it is inside the camera.

paul_c5x4 said:

Might be worth trying a couple of enlarging lenses first. A 50mm lens with a 39mm LTM thread would be fairly easy to mount on just about any lens board - if you wanted to try reversing it, mount the lens on the board so that it is inside the camera.

Click to expand...

Paul, some enlarging lenses' cells are direct fits in a #0 shutter. 105/4.5 and 150/5.6 Comparons, 100/5.6 Componon-S and 105/5.6 Componon (I hope I got the right focal length with the right version of Componon) for example. With them reverse mounting the lens is easy, just put the rear cell in the front of the shutter and the front cell in the rear. That's what I did when I was trying my Comparons out. With others that have filter threads in front adapters (male filter thread-to-male M40x0.75) to #1 shutters aren't that expensive. That's how I use my 4"/5.6 Enlarging Pro Raptar. The preferred shutter IMO is the Polaroid MP-4 Copal #1 Press. It has no diaphragm so sells for little. And it has a preview lever, so is easy to use.

Remember, a shutter is usually needed.

I've never tried shortish enlarging lenses for macro work, haven't felt the need because I have decent macro lenses shorter than 50 mm. If the OP goes ahead with LF madness he'll need to use a short lens to keep the extension needed short. 15:1 needs 16*f extension. That's quite a lot if the lens used is 50 mm. 30:1 needs 31*f extension. Even more. I've done a little testing that high, never had to work seriously in that range. At those magnifications vibration and flex in the system are killers.

David, I'm sorry I was unclear. I've used a reversed 55/2.8 MicroNikkor AIS on my 2x3 Graphics for work around 2:1 - 3:1. Others have used that lens, also reversed, at higher magnifications on 4x5. Super lens in these applications but not useful to the OP, its too long.

I've tested enlarging lenses as well. They have excellent flatness of field at the recommended magnification range. I just orient them so that they follow the geometry they would on the enlarger, so if the subject is larger than the film format, as for copy work, they should be oriented normally, and if the subject is smaller than the film format, they should be reversed.

Reversed lenses are prone to flare, so it's worth trying to devise some sort of shade for them, such as a simple paper tube.

bifcake said:

Has anyone done macro photography with a large format camera? If I'm not mistaken, Karl Blossfeldt shot macro with an 8x10 camera (I could be wrong about that), but I haven't seen anyone else do a macro shoot with a 4x5 or an 8x10. If anyone has tried it, please share your experiences.

Thanks

Click to expand...

OP sorry i didn't post things that i was talking about

here are a couple,
some taken macro the traditional way ( bellows extended ) ( 1, 4, 5 )
others taken with a home made close up attachment
all with lf film ( 5x7 and 4x5 )

I work at MUCH greater magnifications, which obviously leads to much greater headaches as you scale the format.