burnt embers

This post is a teaser of things to come. It teases me because I am dying to see what is possible using my Canon 5Dii when the adapter finally arrives. And it is a teaser because these examples are very casual photographs that were more about testing to see that the gear will work than about taking good pictures – very little attention to lighting, to backgrounds, to set up, and so on. So, what am I talking about?

Gear, I am afraid. Serious macro gear. My regular readers will know I love macro photography. And that is why the picture above is of a steel ruler, the black lines are 1mm marks on its edge. If you couldn’t care less about gear, then just look at the photos, they have short captions without too much gear talk in them.

The other day, after putting off for too long getting a print made for Melinda Green Harvey, I finally got everything sorted out and went to do it.  I had no choice in parking and ended up beside a second hand store with a going-out-of-business sign. I had to have “a quick look” and of course there was something just waiting for me. Melinda told me it was procrastination paying off, and maybe she is right.

Tiny shell

That something was a Canon FL Bellows unit in excellent condition (it also comes with a slide and negative copying attachment). I talked the store keeper down to $25 and went away happy. The bellows takes Canon FD mount lenses of which there happened to be a couple in this household. My Canon EOS mount camera needs an adapter to fit on the bellows and sadly no one in town has one, so it is on order. In the meantime, my son’s Micro 4/3’s Lumix G10 does have a Canon FD adapter (hence the lenses). So, today I show you some shots taken with that camera through the bellows. The Lumix has a much smaller sensor than my camera, no way to focus with a magnified live view (that I could find anyway) and lacks a number of other features that my camera has and which I could have done with. So, overall I was not expecting highest quality images, more I was just trying to get the feel of things during what seems like an interminable wait for the adapter to come from Asia. Hence also the casual nature of these shots – these are my second try with the bellows, and first try with all the parts in one place.

Detail of a tiny sea urchin

Taking all of that into consideration, I am pretty excited about what I am going to be able to do with this unit. Initial experiments with a Cymko 28mm f2.8 macro FD mount lens were disappointing due to a great deal of chromatic aberration. Besides that, I had to take the front filter off the lens in order to get close enough to focus, blocking the light. Trials with a Canon 50mm f1.8 that I picked up a few months ago for $2 were quite good, no fringing etc, but there was something a bit lacking and again the lens was close to the subject. During my research into the bellows I realised I had seen a Canon extension tube (or ‘lens size adapter’ as they call it) which was made for macro work at the second-hand store. I went back for it ($6), mostly because I knew also that there was a pretty reasonably priced Canon FD 50mm f3.5 macro lens for sale at Camera Traders here in town and that was the lens that the bellows unit was most often used with. The extension tube was expressly designed to work with that lens for doubling its magnification to 1:1 when attached directly to the camera. An interesting feature is that the lens when mounted on the extension tube is rotated with the “underside” up, and on that side there is a second ring of f-stop labels which are adjusted to reflect the loss of light from the extension tube. It moves from a f3.5 to an f5.0 lens with the tube attached. I hate to think what effective f-stop it is at with the bellows unit – must be something like f-100.  When I went to Camera Traders to look at the macro lens I found that they also had a ‘macro photo coupler’ which allows one to mount a lens backwards for greater magnification and a bit more distance from the subject. They took an offer of $100 for the lens and coupler, which was not exactly a bargain, but the lens is optically superb and exactly what I needed, so a pretty good deal I think and no waiting involved.

And so, that is the gear that lurks behind these shots- it cost me less than $150 (including the adapter when it arrives). Now that might seem like a lot, but compared to a lens of comparable performance, or equivalent new gear, it is probably less than 10% what I would otherwise be looking at (and not buying).

Snap fastener detail

All but one shot of the coin are taken with the bellows at full extension with the extension tube and coupler and reversed macro lens used in combination. This is maxing out the magnification to see how it all works. I have not calculated the magnification, but I am thinking it must in the X6 to X8 range with this crop sensor (which introduces its own magnification as well). I have included in the gallery below a few photos of the same objects taken months ago with macro lenses where the magnification is known from the lens – the captions make these clear.  None of the images are cropped except one from the Takumar macro.

Below is a picture of the set up, with the small clothing snap (in picture above) being the subject (partially hidden by the flashlight). The cat is snoozing in the background by the fire (where else?).

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Lumix G10, Canon FD 50mm f3.5 Macro Lens, Canon Life Size Adapter, Canon Macro Photo Coupler, Canon Bellows FL, ISO100, various exposures. A few shots (the black and white ones) are HDR from 3 brackets. Lit with a small white LED flashlight, room lights and for some shots also a small red LED flashlight.

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