Stacking lenses on MF for extreme macro

Rudeofus · Mar 23, 2011

The macro capabilities of my RZ67 appear somewhat limited to me at the moment. The 140 macro lens is pricey, requires two extension rings and only goes to 1:1 (which isn't that much considering the format). I still haven't found any references to a macro bellows for the RZ67.

Then I ran across some references to stacked lenses and thought: wow, that looks like the way to go! Preserve all the functionality because the main lens is still connected to the camera body and attach some lens to its front. Even the 250mm/110mm combo should give magnifications up to 2.5:1 and should put less load on the camera frame than the 250 with an extension ring.

Has anyone tried this before? Did I miss something in my considerations? For some reason I see tons of references to this technique in small format forums whereas I see little to nothing for medium format. Are there some serious drawbacks to this method or is improvisation just not seen worthy of MF?

film_man · Mar 23, 2011

Interesting, I just tried reversing my 80mm on the 250 on my 501CM and it does do some serious close-up. And I haven't even put the tubes on. I'm not sure how much the exposure compensation would be calculated and I'm pretty sure I haven't seen anything like reversing adapters for that. Is there a calculator for getting the magnification?

EdSawyer · Mar 23, 2011

I've thought of this too but haven't done it yet. A good combo to try would be medium to longer lens as the primary lens, with a wide-angle on the front of it.

Something like 110, 140, 180, 210 as the primary lens, with something like 65 or 50 as the reversed lens on front.

It's going to stress the front mount a fair bit so be careful of that... support the lenses adequately.

RE: metering - will be tricky. I'd use the AEII prism, that should handle it for the most part. Polaroids would be useful too.

Another option is do the above (revsered lenses) on the Tilt-shift adapter, which will get more DOF with a bit of tilt. DOF is going to be razor-thin with a reversed lens on front, due to extreme magnifcation.

a 77mm male-to-male filter ring adapter would be all that's needed to mount the reversed lens on the front of another lens.

-Ed

paul ron · Mar 23, 2011

Extension tubes are fairly cheap.

Rudeofus · Mar 23, 2011

Thanks for all the replies so far. For those who are interested: there is little to no technical detail available online about lens stacking. Most of what I read were practical experiments and presentation of results - example pictures with small format cameras are abundant and look quite impressive. Technically the reversed lens works like a diopter, so just from this there should not be any exposure compensation necessary - unlike with extension tubes. Magnification is roughly the ratio of focal lengths, so putting a 250mm on my camera and attaching a reversed 110 to it should give me about 2.3:1 - greater than life size! It would take a long stack of extension rings to get 2.3:1 with anything but a wide angle lens.

It may be somewhat difficult to get a 77mm to 77mm lens reversal adapter, enjoyyourcamera.com doesn't seem to carry one. I'm thinking of having one machined for me, it should be just a longer ring with a 77mm filter thread on its outside. For weight reasons I'd rather not stack the 65mm, my first experiments will be with the 110mm and my small format 28-70/2.8 zoom for even larger magnification. Ha - I finally have a reason for getting a 250 now

Maris · Mar 23, 2011

I just tried a +6D close-up lens together with a +4D close-up lens on my Mamiya RB67 camera fitted with a 127mm lens. At full bellows extension an object 1.3 inches long just fits the width of the frame. This is near 2:1 magnification. The supplementary lenses were part of a set and are worth about $2 each.

The Mamiya RB/RZ system offers many sneaky ways of getting high magnifications. If I had the gear I'd combine extension tubes plus close-up lenses and then try to figure out how to light the set-ups and manage the ultra-thin depth of field.

keithwms · Mar 23, 2011

Many ways to go ultramacro with an rb or rz. I highly recommend just getting the extension tubes and try a wide lens e.g. the 90 or 127. Others have recommended using a TC; I don't really care for the Mamiya or Kenko TCs but why not give it a go if you have one.

I have an excellent Nikkor diopter, I suppose that'd work, but almost all of the RB/RZ lenses have 77mm threads. And I am not such a fan of diopters either.

You could of course use a smaller format lens, then the normal rb/rz bellows extension will give you high mag macro. (the film to flange distance is much shorter for 35mm format so any extension of that gives you a lot of magnification) Coverage isn't an issue with high mag, you'll get plenty of coverage even from a small format lens. E.g. put a normal or macro lens for 35mm format on there and it'll cover MF for sure, once you get well past 1:1. If you want to get fancy you can take a rear lens cap and a RB/RZ body cap, glue them together, drill out a hole, and voila, an adapter. Of course, working distance is another subject altogether! You may well find that it isn't sufficient for some short 35mm lenses. You might consider a 645 format lens, e.g. the 80/4 is an excellent choice. I find it convenient to have a combination of bellows and helicoidal focusing.

Magnification is easy. Working distance, that is the hard part. Sometimes you wonder how the hell you will get the light in, when the lens is less than an inch from the subject

Dan Fromm · Mar 23, 2011

Rudeofus said:
Thanks for all the replies so far. For those who are interested: there is little to no technical detail available online about lens stacking.

Most of the world's information is offline.

Do yourself a favor, buy a copy of A. A. Blaker's lovely book Field Photography. I b'lieve it is out of print, could be mistaken. Available used from sellers on, e.g., abebooks.com, alibris.com, amazon.com, ... Blaker explains lens stacking very well.

Stacking lenses is a cheap expedient, and remember that a diopter is a diopter is a diopter.

For a wider and deeper explanation of getting the magnification, buy a copy of Lester Lefkowitz' book The Manual of Closeup Photography.

Short random comments on a bulletin board are a very poor substitute for a good book.

EdSawyer · Mar 23, 2011

The small-format lens on the RZ is a good idea too, but leaves the issue of a shutter...

keithwms · Mar 23, 2011

EdSawyer said:
The small-format lens on the RZ is a good idea too, but leaves the issue of a shutter...

Not really; at extreme mag the exposure times are often many seconds... or minutes. I just hand-shutter or use a light switch to control the exposure.

Lopaka · Mar 23, 2011

paul ron said:
Extension tubes are fairly cheap.

True, compared to lens price. Putting both extensions on (45mm + 82mm) brings the focus sooooo close.

Bob

Rudeofus · Mar 24, 2011

Lopaka said:
True, compared to lens price. Putting both extensions on (45mm + 82mm) brings the focus sooooo close.

Wide angle lenses plus stacks of extension tubes won't achieve much. Since wide angle lenses are anything but ultra thin, the plane of focus just moves inside the lens before the magnification gets all that high. With my 65mm and one extension ring I barely got 1:1 when the subject already hit the front element of the lens. That may explain why professional macro lenses are mostly in the short to medium telephoto range. It's not about getting very close to the subject, we want to achieve high magnification, these two are somewhat related but not the same.

Thanks, Dan, for the book recommendation, certainly something to look at. Both book are from the 70ies, and I won't find them in a brick and mortar book store. Are there any new books you can recommend, or have optics and engineering left the field of photography books since then?

Dan Fromm · Mar 24, 2011

Rudeofus said:
Thanks, Dan, for the book recommendation, certainly something to look at. Both book are from the 70ies, and I won't find them in a brick and mortar book store. Are there any new books you can recommend, or have optics and engineering left the field of photography books since then?

You're welcome. The rules haven't changed since the books were written. You are, though, in a slightly difficult situation. As I understand the RZ system -- please correct me if I'm mistaken -- the camera has a built-in bellows for focusing and there's no bellows made to fit it for working closer than the body will allow. This forces you to use diopters.

There ought to be a way to attach a lens in shutter to an RZ mount. That would make it possible to use a short enlarging lens in shutter, e.g., 75 or 105 Comparon. I have no idea about costs.

Wide angle lenses for SLRs are funny beasts. Always retrofocus, i.e., with the rear node far behind the rear element and with the front node I don't know where. But macro lenses made for working at very high magnifications are as short as 10 mm. My shortest, since unloaded, was a 16. These beasties are of normal construction, i.e., neither telephoto nor retrofocus, and their shortest front node to subject distances are their focal lengths, at infinite magnification.

You might try reversing y'r 65 if that's physically possible. Again, pardon my ignorance of the RZ system. Its minimum flange-to-subject distance is the the body's flange-to-film distance.

Good luck, have fun,

Dan

MattKing · Mar 24, 2011

With the 90mm f/3.5 L W lens and the two extension tubes, the RZ67 gives a maximum magnification of 1.9 life-size.

With the (relatively expensive) 75mm shift lens and the two extension tubes, the maximum magnification goes up to 2.3 life-size.

I would think that if one needs significantly greater magnifications, a leaf shutter camera like the RB67 isn't the best way to go.

jeffreyg · Mar 24, 2011

Check with Edmund optics ( www.edmundoptis.com). They have all sorts of lens attachments and lenses and may have what you are looking for.

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

keithwms · Mar 24, 2011

MattKing said:
I would think that if one needs significantly greater magnifications, a leaf shutter camera like the RB67 isn't the best way to go.

I don't see how the leaf shutter enters the picture. As I said somewhere above, ultramacro exposures become so long that you can hand shutter or use your light switch or whatever, to define the exposure duration. Actually, when exposures are ~1 min long or more, you won't see any effect at all even if you shutter with the mirror or clumsily insert a darkslide over the film.

That said, if anyone wishes to spend a lot of time at 2:1 and beyond, I recommend mounting your rb or rz lens on an LF camera. I use a 5x7 rittreck for this (very sturdy).

You can of course stack a multitude of tubes on the rb, but it becomes rather unwieldy and can put too much strain on the bellows rails unless you are shooting straight down.

MattKing · Mar 24, 2011

Keith:

It isn't so much the shutters themselves, as it is the entire system, with all its interlocks, that make the RB67 or RZ67 and its lenses sub-optimal for these large magnifications.

A camera that permits use of an accessory macro bellows, or a view camera with a roll film back (assuming a desire to use roll film) just make more sense.

David Brown · Mar 24, 2011

Dan Fromm said:
Short random comments on a bulletin board are a very poor substitute for a good book.

Rudeofus · Mar 25, 2011

I just wanted to report about my first experiments. I just hand held a few lenses (Sigma 28-70/2.8 EX DF, Sigma 14/2.8, Mamiya 65mm L-A) against my 110 and tried to focus on a stuffed animal.

All these lenses caused considerable vignetting, most of the time the image circle didn't even touch the long edges of the frame.
The 65mm L-A is such a heavy lens that I am really afraid of mounting it on my 110mm.
The view finder became really dark. I only used the room light to illuminate the scene (6 x 40W halogen light), focusing became really difficult. I assume I would have fared better with 500W construction lights.
The magnification I got with the 14mm lens against the 110 was breath taking. Likewise the DOF was razor thin, to the point where it was difficult to judge focus from the view finder. This was with the 14mm lens wide open. If I would have stopped it down (which is doable but not trivial with Canon EOS mount lenses), the view finder would have been even darker. For that reason I recommend lenses with an aperture ring for this kind of setup.
If the view finder is bright enough, focusing with the RZ67 is a charm because of its bellows focusing. The bellows doesn't change the magnification much, but moves the lens towards the subject, with puts it in focus. This essentially saves me from buying a macro slide.
I was quite pleased with the subject to lens distance, which was at least 3 or 4 cm at all magnifications (probably the registration distance of each lens, as the 65mm L-A allowed an even greater distance as the small format lenses).

I would really appreciate it if some RZ67 owner could hold a 110 against a 250 and a 360 and report how that works, especially with regard to vignetting. I still look into getting a tele lens for my RZ67 and would like to know if one or the other also works well for this kind of macro setup.

EdSawyer · Mar 25, 2011

I'll Try the 250/350 + 110 and other combos as soon as I can.

Does mamiya make an aerial-image screen for the RZ? if so, that would be the screen to use for high-mag work. Something like an Olympus 1-12 screen for the OM system.

Edit - yes, they do. It's billed as:

Cross Hair
All matte screen with small aerial (totally transparent) spot with cross hairs. Used for parallax focusing and designed for special high magnification applications. Especially suited for macro and telephoto photography.
#212-425

That would be the screen to get and use for high-mag stuff. It makes a huge difference when you get up above say 2:1 or more.

bascom49 · Mar 26, 2011

You can find the data for various extension tube / lens combinations here :

http://www.mamiya-usa.com/rb67-pro-sd-accessories-extension-tubes-close-up-table.html

EdSawyer · Mar 29, 2011

Tried some combos

I tried the 210APO, 250APO and 350APO as the primary lens, all with 110/2.8 stacked on front, reversed.

Eyeballing it, it seems like they all should cover the frame fine, I didn't detect any vignetting but it's hard to say for sure, the finder is quite dark at that point, even with a Brightscreen 20/20 installed.

210 + 110, focus at infinity: The letters "Mamiy" on a standard RZ67 lens cap fill the frame diagonally. I'd say this is greater than 1:1, maybe 1.5:1 ?

250 + 110, focus at infinity: Letters "Mam" fill frame diagonally.

350 + 110, focus at infinity (crikey that's an unwieldy combo!), the letters "Ma" fill the frame. Probably 3:1 ?

Another option that would probably provide more magnification but at possibly less coverage (?) would be a shorter front lens reversed, e.g. 75mm, 65mm, etc. I didn't try those combos.

Distance from front of lens to subject varied a bit but was generally about 3-5" I'd speculate. Decent working distance but not all that long. Requires some very mellow bugs if you want to try this as a field rig shooting insects, etc.

The aerial-image screen would be VERY useful here, I think. Even with brightscreen installed, the finder is quite dim.

I'd also use a nodal slide/rail probably. With that crazy-ass rig hanging off the front (say 350+110), even with a support bracket, its' going to be nutty to use the bellows focusing I think. A slide/rail would be a better combo .

Massive tripod will be a must. A ringlight or dual-head macro flash would be ideal too, and mght allow handholding (!) for field use.

The next step is to try all of the above, but also with the tilt-shift adapter in there too. That could/should help DOF a fair bit. Managing that whole combo is going to be insane though. Just mounting it, I fear for the front standard on the RZ body...

I don't have a male-to-male 77mm ring, I just hand-held the above combos for testing.

-Ed

Rudeofus · Apr 14, 2011

Just wanted to report my initial test results with the 250 non apo. To my great surprise all of the lenses I held against it worked well without visible vignetting. The magnification I got with the Sigma 14mm against the Mamiya 250 was unbelievable - like a microscope, of course with razor thin DOF.

All my experiments were made with hand holding the lens in front of the 250. I was thinking about having a 77mm to 77mm adapter made, please contact me if you are also interested.

MattKing · Apr 14, 2011

Would this reversing ring work for you?: http://www.camerafilters.com/pages/macrorings.aspx

Rudeofus · Apr 15, 2011

MattKing said:
Would this reversing ring work for you?: http://www.camerafilters.com/pages/macrorings.aspx

Wow, that seems to be what I've been looking for and at a price which is hard to believe! My last remaining worry is whether the filter thread on my 110 and especially my 65 is strong enough to hold the lens.

Stacking lenses on MF for extreme macro

Rudeofus

film_man

EdSawyer

paul ron

Rudeofus

Maris

keithwms

Dan Fromm

EdSawyer

keithwms

Lopaka

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Dan Fromm

MattKing

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keithwms

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Stacking lenses on MF for extreme macro

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