An interesting fly - revisited

[mtuell]

While the intervening 8 days have not been kind to my friend the fly, http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... hp?t=33748, I got some much better pictures today.

I got a 67-52 mm reversal ring today from Amazon ($10), putting on the Pentax 67 medium format lens my friend (not the fly... ) loaned me (I've been having fun in the darkroom, so he dusted off his old camera and a few lenses for me...)

This is a 105 mm prime at f/2.4, attached (reversed) to my Nikkor 55-200 zoom lens.





At 200 mm on the zoom and 105 reversed, with both focused at infinity, I get about 1.9:1 on sensor, with APS-C giving a field of about 12.6 mm (just shy of half inch). I'll have to try his 165 mm and get closer to 1:1.

Here is a 39 image DMap stack on my vertical rig with a pair of LED goosenecks and off-camera flash (my first attempt at that), so got it down to ISO 100 and 1/200th of a second exposures with the Pentax lens at f/8.

This is 25% sized, with a little auto-levels and unsharp masking in PS.



I think this lens may become a favorite... I might have to find my own copy! Being a medium format SLR lens, it has potential for a large field and good working distance.

Mike

[Lou Jost]

I would suggest not going to medium format on the APS sensor. Medium-format lenses aren't designed for pixel densities as high as the ones on APS sensors, because digital medium format sensors have relatively large pixels. You should be better off using good 35mmm format lenses. They will still have vastly more coverage than you need on an APS sensor.

[mtuell]

Lou, while I see your point, a) I hope to get a full frame camera body at some point, and b) this is a circa 1990 analog camera lens. I'm not sure how it compares to a medium format lens designed for digital, but it may be better optically. I know it puts down some nice 6 x 7 images on film!

Thanks for looking!
Mike

[Lou Jost]

It might be a good idea to at least test it against a 35mm format lens in this application. Film-era lenses, in my experience, are far less contrasty than digital-version lenses from the same manufacturer and lens line, when both are used on a digital body. And the fact that the medium-format lens made good prints or slides is misleading. You need to compare equal-size areas. An image taken with your lens might make a nice 20x30 print from that 6x7 piece of film, but what if you tried to make a 20x30 print from just a 3.5 x 2.4 cm piece of that film? That's what you are really doing here. Generally it wouldn't be as good as the same-size print made from a good 35mm format lens on 35mm film or sensor.

[mtuell]

Perhaps I'm "stupid and easily impressed" (to quote a friend), but I think this stereo turned out pretty nice!



I'll get the usual suspects up on my site hopefully tonight. EDIT : done!

Mike