What is the best macro lens ever for 1:1 size?

nsurit · May 14, 2009

First answer would be Olympus, but then I'm an OM kind of guy.

Second answer would be, "Why don't you look for a dedicated slide duplicator?" With a little patience one could probably be had for less than what the lens and bellow would cost for you 35mm.

Bill Barber

Q.G. · May 15, 2009

Chazzy said:
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the Zeiss Luminars, although I know that they are very expensive.

Most of them are made for magnifications far beyond 1:1.

And they are not just very expensive.
They also are rather awkward in use: you need adapters to fit them to any camera; no focussing mount; no focussing to infinity with most of them (the 100 mm and 63 mm will, depending on the adapter and the camera's flange to film distance), but then no good at infinity anyway; manual setting of the aperture, without click stops; no f-numbers on the lens, but exposure factors instead.

They are great performers. But rather 'specialist' lenses.

For more general photomacrography, i also would recommend the Olympus lenses. Both the 80 mm and 135 mm bellow heads, and the 50 mm and 90 mm camera mount lenses.
And for 1:1 again not their 20 mm and 38 mm 'versions' of the Luminars (though the later versions of these at least have an OM mount and an 'automatic' diaphragm).

Q.G. · May 15, 2009

Rol_Lei Nut said:
Also, no one has mentioned the effect of a camera optimised for autofocus but used for manual focus as opposed to one optimised for MF in the first place.

Probably much more significant for the end result than the differences between various good lenses....

You mean the viewfinder?
At 1:1, the thing doesn't get that dark. And if the screen is interchangeable, there probably is one suited for manual focus too.

cmo · May 15, 2009

Q.G. said:
Most of them are made for magnifications far beyond 1:1.

And they are not just very expensive.
They also are rather awkward in use: you need adapters to fit them to any camera; no focussing mount; no focussing to infinity with most of them (the 100 mm and 63 mm will, depending on the adapter and the camera's flange to film distance), but then no good at infinity anyway; manual setting of the aperture, without click stops; no f-numbers on the lens, but exposure factors instead.

They are great performers. But rather 'specialist' lenses.

For more general photomacrography, i also would recommend the Olympus lenses. Both the 80 mm and 135 mm bellow heads, and the 50 mm and 90 mm camera mount lenses.
And for 1:1 again not their 20 mm and 38 mm 'versions' of the Luminars (though the later versions of these at least have an OM mount and an 'automatic' diaphragm).

Well, the disadvatages of the Luminars except from potentially high prices are less important for my purposes. The last 5% between "outstanding" and "ultimate perfection" are never cheap when buying photographic equipment.

The Luminars would be attached to a bellows, fixed aperture, almost fixed exposure and that's it... for the highest quality, that might really be a hairsplitting, nit-picky choice between an 80mm Olympus macro head and a Luminar.

So, for a maniac like me, will there be a difference if I look at huge enlargements from shots taken with these lenses?

I am sure only very few people will be able to reply to this without guessing.

Q.G. · May 15, 2009

cmo said:
The Luminars would be attached to a bellows, fixed aperture, almost fixed exposure and that's it... for the highest quality, that might really be a hairsplitting, nit-picky choice between an 80mm Olympus macro head and a Luminar.

So, for a maniac like me, will there be a difference if I look at huge enlargements from shots taken with these lenses?

Luminars (and the equally good Olympus 20 mm and 38 mm macro lenses) and the Zuiko 80 mm are made for different magnifications.
If you want to work around 1:1, keeping close to it, get the 80 mm lens. It is just as good. In that range, better even than most Luminars.

cmo said:
I am sure only very few people will be able to reply to this without guessing.

I am not so sure about that.
People who like photomacrography like Olympus and the Olympus lenses as well (because the system is so versatile, very helpful. And the lenses are among the very best).
And they also like Luminars.
So there is a good chance that many who have experience with one will have experience with the other too.

And i am indeed not guessing.

xtolsniffer · May 15, 2009

I have a really crazy setup for working at 1x to 2x in the field. It's an 80mm Zuiko macro on the Zuiko bellows, with a home-made converter to mount it onto a Nikon Fm3a. The whole lot is mounted on a home-made rifle stock with a double cable release to stop down the aperture on the lens and trigger the camera. Illumination is via a Sigma macroflash on the front of the lens. It sounds like a mad thing to take out into the field, but the alternative is only slightly more manageable: that of the FM3a, motordrive, Kenko 2x converter, then set of extension tubes and finally Tamron 90mm macro. You get up to 2x with that, but much greater working distance, which sounds like a good thing but you can't then illuminate it with the macro flash as it doesn't have enough power! So then you need a bigger flash on an extension arm.....
Once you get beyond 1x in the field, things start to get a little wierd.....

David A. Goldfarb · May 15, 2009

I had a 25mm Luminar and sold it because it wasn't as sharp or contrasty as my Canon FD 35mm/2.8 Macrophoto, which is also an RMS mount lens for use with a bellows. Of course they are quite different focal lengths, but I found I used them more or less interchangeably, and I also liked the greater working distance of the 35mm.

There is a more recent series of Luminars than the ones that were made through the 1970s like the one that I had, and I suspect these newer versions are better than the old ones. The later ones have blue engraving on them, are hard to find, and are very expensive.

Here's a sample shot using the Canon 35mm on 4x5" in my APUG gallery--

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

And here's an old favorite on 35mm (Kodachrome 25)--

frdrx · May 15, 2009

You want a Carl Zeiss S-(or Makro-)Planar mounted on a pair of Contax bellows with a slide duplicator attached. Look here.

Q.G. · May 15, 2009

David A. Goldfarb said:
I had a 20mm Luminar [...]

That will probably have been a 25 mm Luminar.

Ken N · May 15, 2009

To the OP's post, you can do a whole lot worse than Olympus' lowly Zuiko 50/3.5 with 25mm of extension. This was a very very common slide/duplication setup for years and years. The 50/3.5 goes to 1:2 without the extension tubes, 1:1 with. And it's flat-fielded.

David A. Goldfarb · May 15, 2009

Q.G. said:
That will probably have been a 25 mm Luminar.

Correct, 25mm/f:3.5. Let me edit that.

cmo · May 15, 2009

Did any of you ever work with Novoflex bellows heads, also known as Noflexar? There are tons of them available in 60mm and 105mm, they must have been very popular in the past, at least in Europe. Some rarer ones are 35mm and 135mm.

cmo · Jul 5, 2009

In the meanwhile I am the very happy owner of an Olympus bellows with a 4/80mm bellows head, and I have to say, it is probably one of the sharpest lenses I ever used... mission accomplished. I acquired a taste for macro photography, the closer the better.

So, thanks to all and more question about "the closer the better":

I found out there were 2 other Olympus bellows heads, 20mm and 38mm, made for higher magnification. But recently someone offered me a very strange lens with an OM mount, it is a bellows head with some LED lamps built into it, probably as a built-in lighting. The only text visible is "on - off". The owner says it is a special lens not available in the normal Olympus lists and made for extremely high magnification.

Any idea what that could be and whether it is useful?

JohnArs · Jul 5, 2009

The reference lense was the Nikkor Micro AFD f2.8 60mm for years in the german Color Foto and Fotomagazin tests!
At least till the newer Nikons came out!

Cheers Armin

GJA · Jul 5, 2009

I vaguely remember someone once telling me about a superb Nikon 105 lens that did not have a focus ring. It had to bellows focused and thus was dedicated to the purpose of reproduction. The nikon bellows are great too.

winjeel · Jul 5, 2009

I thought there were easier ways to copy slides / film. I was young back in the days when copying film was done. Now everyone around me just "right clicks" it, so I have nothing but a distant and foggy memory of how that sort of thing was done.

alanrockwood · Jul 5, 2009

I'm not sure of the answer in terms of brand/model designation. However, from optical theory the best solution for 1:1 copying would be a truly symmetrical lens because at 1:1 magnification certain aberrations, such as coma, lateral color, and distortion are automatically canceled out by symmetry.

If the designer chooses the elements of the design such that the Petzval sum is zero then one has at least the possibility to simultaneously eliminate astigmatism and curvature of field.

I have played around with the computer program Winlens to generate theoretical designs for lenses for 1:1 copying that correct for all the Seidel aberrations. If one allows the use of two aspherical surfaces then one can design a theoretical achromat that is diffraction-limited over a limited field angle and for a single wavelength. It is limited by secondary color at other wavelengths. (However, if one were to also use ultra-low dispersion glasses then secondary color could also be brought to a minimum.) The f-number of such a lens would be modest - something like f/4.0 or 5.6.

A real lens designer (not me) could probably do somewhat better.

What is the best macro lens ever for 1:1 size?

nsurit

Q.G.

Q.G.

cmo

Q.G.

xtolsniffer

David A. Goldfarb

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frdrx

Q.G.

Ken N

David A. Goldfarb

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cmo

cmo

JohnArs

GJA

winjeel

alanrockwood

What is the best macro lens ever for 1:1 size?

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