What lens for OM bellows?

[John51]

Bellows and slide copier attachment has just arrived. Gives me an excuse for a bit more GAS.

Which OM bellows lens should I be looking out for? Ideally, I'd like one that is good for slide copying as well as other macro work.

 

[cooltouch]

Back in the day I had a Canon Auto Bellows with the slide copier attachment. I found that the 50mm f/3.5 macro, when used with the bellows, gave me just the magnification I needed for 1:1 slide dupes. Anything longer and you'll have crops of your slides.

A bellows is a bellows is a bellows. Doesn't really matter the brand. The collapsed and max extension measurements will be close to agreement from one brand to the next. So what worked for my Canon setup will likely work just as well for your Oly setup. So my recommendation is for you to find an Oly 50mm macro, which is not a bellows-specific lens.

 

[EdSawyer]

The "right" lens for slide copying with that setup, and also a good macro lens is the OM 80/4 auto macro. I think I have a spare one, I will check. The 20, 38, 50, and 135/4.5 are all good choices too, depending on magnification. I had a huge pile of the OM macro system for a while but have been slowly parting with it as I just don't use it enough to justify.

 

[wiltw]

Olympus made some lenses for exclusive use on the bellows, the 20mm f/2 and the 38mm f/2.8 and 80mm f/4 and 135mm f/4.5 The magnification ranges from these lenses...

• 20mm 4.2X-16X
• 38mm 1.7X-8X
• 80mm 0.5X-2X
• 135mm 0.2X-0.5X

so the 80mm seems most appropriate for 1X copy work. Olympus even says,

"When a regular standard lenses are used with a bellows for close-up photography, image quality deteriorates steadily. Even the 50mm macro lens starts gettin gout of its depth at magnifications over one half life size."​

 

[thuggins]

Olympus made seven lenses for use with the bellows; 20f2, 20f3.5, 38f2.8, 38f3.5, 80f4 (manual and auto), and 135f4.5. Their recommendation for 1 to 1 work was the 80f4.

The problem with these lenses is that they are of little use apart from the bellows. They have a very limited focus range and several don't even have a helicoid, so all the focusing must be done with the bellows. While a 50mm or 90mm macro may not have all the image quality of the 80mm when used with a bellows or extension tubes, these are all around excellent lenses that you'll get a lot more use out of.

 

[Les Sarile]

Olympus made some lenses for exclusive use on the bellows, the 20mm f/2 and the 38mm f/2.8 and 80mm f/4 and 135mm f/4.5 The magnification ranges from these lenses...

• 20mm 4.2X-16X
• 38mm 1.7X-8X
• 80mm 0.5X-2X
• 135mm 0.2X-0.5X

Do you know how these magnifications are achieved - whether or not the lenses have to be mounted in reverse?

 

[wiltw]

Do you know how these magnifications are achieved - whether or not the lenses have to be mounted in reverse?

Designed simply to be used in a 'conventional' orientation, not necessary to reverse on the bellows. In fact, in some cases (the 80mm and the 135mm) the lens has a signficantly large diameter protrusion behind the mount location of the lens, which projects back into the bellows and which prevents use mounted on the OM body directly.

 

[Les Sarile]

Designed simply to be used in a 'conventional' orientation, not necessary to reverse on the bellows. In fact, in some cases (the 80mm and the 135mm) the lens has a signficantly large diameter protrusion behind the mount location of the lens, which projects back into the bellows and which prevents use mounted on the OM body directly.

That is a very good advantage as I believe I cannot attain 16X magnification even with my normal 20mm reversed. Do you have examples with such magnifications from that combination?

 

[ph]

The OMbellows not only has a bellow between the camera body and the lens, but also between the front of the lens and the slide\negative mounting device\\ your target. This eliminates stray light but does favour OM lenses. The bellows also had a socket for the double-stranded cable release so that you did not have to stop down manually. The camera side of the bellows has an interchangeable mount, so one does not suffer the added extension of an OM to whatever adapter.

I have only kept the 135bellows lens which can also be used on the variable extension helix so as to mount on a camera (OM1-4 or ith adapter on digitals) and focus to infinity.

Nowadays I only use the bellows for digitizing the occasional slide and have pressed an old enlarger lens into service (Rodenstock Apo-Ronar 50mm). It needs a step-up ring in order for the front bellows to fit which hampers the aperture ring, so I use it at fixed aperture.

p.

 

[BAC1967]

I don't have any of the lenses that were made for use with the bellows so I just use the 50mm and 100mm prime lenses depending on what maximum magnification I'm trying to get.

Below was shot with an Olympus OM-1 with Extension Bellows and E. Zuiko Auto-T f/2.8 100mm lens. Cinestill 800T film.

Shutter Macro by Bryan Chernick, on Flickr

 

[John51]

Thanks for the replies. I'm going to have some fun with this kit. Have just found the 2nd bellows in the slide copier like ph said.

 

[John51]

I learned of the close up attachment for the 80mm Auto Macro when used with the Auto extension tubes. Any use if using a bellows or not to bother?

 

[Algo después]

...regarding this thread, recently I got an OM system with several extras (autobellows, 3 flashes, a varimagni finder, a 50mm macro, a 2x teleconverter, some filters, etc.) and I was wondering what if you would adapt those cheap microscope lens such as Amscope 4x in a film camera. Guess it´s just a matter of printing an adapter to connect to the autobellows because you need 160mm at least of distance between the camera and the lens (if you need 4x of magnification) and obviously a ton of strobes. Certainly you can´t use the cable release here nevertheless I think this is not a big deal, is it?

Anyway this lens seems like a nice option (17 bucks) because the zuiko 20mm is a hole in your pocket nowadays. So, does anybody have tried this before?

$17 Plan 4x Objective — Close-up Photography

The Big Surprise A couple of weeks ago I picked up a new objective on eBay that had all the right specs but I was really doubtful about the image quality, just how much sharpness and correction can a buyer expect for $17? I felt lucky so I ordered the lens anyway and took the risk. Once I

www.closeuphotography.com

 

[Algo después]

...regarding this thread, recently I got an OM system with several extras (autobellows, 3 flashes, a varimagni finder, a 50mm macro, a 2x teleconverter, some filters, etc.) and I was wondering what if you would adapt those cheap microscope lens such as Amscope 4x in a film camera. Guess it´s just a matter of printing an adapter to connect to the autobellows because you need 160mm at least of distance between the camera and the lens (if you need 4x of magnification) and obviously a ton of strobes. Certainly you can´t use the cable release here nevertheless I think this is not a big deal, is it?

Anyway this is lens is a nice option (17 bucks) because the zuiko 20mm is a hole in your pocket nowadays. So, does anybody have tried this before?

a quick reply to myself (I hope this would be it´s useful for somebody else) :


Given that the maxim magnifications just were possible with certain autobellows´s lenses (for instance, the first versions of manual zuiko 20mm/ 38mm) those are useless if you don´t get the Mount PM-MTob to convert it to the OM bayonet fitting. So in the case that I would decide to get a 300-700 bucks lens I was looking out there for this adapter and I hadn`t too much luck.

Objective Lens Mount PM-MTob – Olympus OM macrophoto group

Adapter for mounting RMS screw-fitting bellows macro lenses or microscope objectives on the Auto Bellows.

www.alanwood.net

Nonetheless I figured out that someone is selling a similar item on Ebay, I mean, one side as RMS mount and the other side as OM mount, so I will try to get this.

RMS female thread to Olympus OM camera mount adapter 763461171213 | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for RMS female thread to Olympus OM camera mount adapter at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

On the other hand, the first version of those lenses were manual so the settings didn´t required the double cable release. In that way, if it works, you can get a 4x setting for less than 60 bucks.

 

[xkaes]

You can get RMS to L39 adapter for about $10-20, and a L39 to ANYTHING adapter for even less. Pretty cheap. Save you $$$ for the lens.