Focusing rail: What do you use?

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ChrisR
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Post by ChrisR »

Well, to recap, if the stage has a 1/4 x 20tpi hole you can put that side straight onto a tripod. But soon you'll have to start drilling and possibly tapping holes through eg the macro rail base, or an intermediate plate of aluminium.
See Sonynut's offer in Equipment Exchange.

An "Arca" type clamp and rail would perhaps be more costly than a cheap macro rail, but better in the long term.

mark_h
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Post by mark_h »

yeatzee wrote:Ok so im going to be buying a newport stage tomorrow + a cheap macro rail as suggested. My question is though, how exactly can I attach the focusing rail with camera attached to the stage and how can I attach the stage to the tripod on the other end?
What tripod head do you have now?
I would hold off on the "cheap" rail for the time being, I think it will be wasted money and until you see the newport I am not sure you clearly understand the parts of this set-up.

yeatzee
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Post by yeatzee »

ChrisR wrote:Well, to recap, if the stage has a 1/4 x 20tpi hole you can put that side straight onto a tripod. But soon you'll have to start drilling and possibly tapping holes through eg the macro rail base, or an intermediate plate of aluminium.
See Sonynut's offer in Equipment Exchange.

An "Arca" type clamp and rail would perhaps be more costly than a cheap macro rail, but better in the long term.
Ok I just found what you were talking about regarding sonynut. I have the utmost basic idea of anything talked about in that thread (pathetic I know). I don't know what to ask for specifically.... as I see it I need a fully threaded "rod" to go into the stage, through another metal piece which is basically a buffer, and popping out on the other end to screw the camera/bellows into. how off am I?

yeatzee
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Post by yeatzee »

mark_h wrote:
yeatzee wrote:Ok so im going to be buying a newport stage tomorrow + a cheap macro rail as suggested. My question is though, how exactly can I attach the focusing rail with camera attached to the stage and how can I attach the stage to the tripod on the other end?
What tripod head do you have now?
I would hold off on the "cheap" rail for the time being, I think it will be wasted money and until you see the newport I am not sure you clearly understand the parts of this set-up.
The only decent tripod I have is a free-bee given to me, which (for the record I know NOTHING about tripods and personally hate using them) is a bogen with this odd "two armed" tripod head. One controls leveling the camera and the other up and down movement. Its VERY strong and can hold this setup quite easily:
Image
The takumar 300mm F/4 i want (and now own) by yeatzee (now 17, but still learning), on Flickr

(note the tripod head)

yeatzee
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Post by yeatzee »

ok so i bought a Newport 420 with 1" micrometer for $50 to get the ball rolling here......

ChrisR
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Post by ChrisR »

If you need to try "interface" plates you'll need screws with the right threads, but you could use offcuts from laminate flooring for a trial. It's quite thin, and comes as a high density fiber board impregnated with something. It's hard and strong but easy to drill with hand tools.

You'll need 1/4" x 20 to go up into the camera/bellows, and whatever the stage needs , down through the plate. It means you'll need s screwdriver to get it together and apart, but hey.
Hex head (Allen) screws are probably nicest, countersunk or counterbored into the plate.

Photo-DIY
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Post by Photo-DIY »

yeatzee wrote:ok so i bought a Newport 420 with 1" micrometer for $50 to get the ball rolling here......
My way for stacking is probably a bit cheaper - got my tools from fleamarkets. But I do not know hox exact the Novoflex bellows stage works:

Image

I am waiting for a Nikon CF Plan 10x and have some other equipment here. I hope I could test my DIY solution in near future with larger enlargements.
Photo Tinkerers Heaven and Hell:
http://www.4photos.de/index-en.html
Some own work - and a bigger list of DIY links

yeatzee
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Post by yeatzee »

ChrisR wrote:If you need to try "interface" plates you'll need screws with the right threads, but you could use offcuts from laminate flooring for a trial. It's quite thin, and comes as a high density fiber board impregnated with something. It's hard and strong but easy to drill with hand tools.

You'll need 1/4" x 20 to go up into the camera/bellows, and whatever the stage needs , down through the plate. It means you'll need s screwdriver to get it together and apart, but hey.
Hex head (Allen) screws are probably nicest, countersunk or counterbored into the plate.
Yeah I just want to get the dang thing (went for the 420 btw because I could get it for way cheaper and apparently the only difference between the 430 and 420 was their size and I wanted something smaller so it worked out.) so I can have it in my hands and go from there. I'm good at rigging up stupidly ghetto setups to get an idea of what I need. Also my ace in my sleeve is my neighbor for 15 years who used to take me out RC plane flying all of the time. He's REALLY good with stuff like this.

According to the seller it has 1/4" 20 threads on the stage so I can just screw in my tripod head. For the camera I'd just need a 1/4" 20 "rod" to go through the stage and into the camera's tripod threads right?

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Post by rjlittlefield »

yeatzee wrote:For the camera I'd just need a 1/4" 20 "rod" to go through the stage and into the camera's tripod threads right?
Yes, plus a couple of extra nuts and washers so you can tighten everything firmly in the correct orientation.

--Rik

yeatzee
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Post by yeatzee »

Well the stage arrived today :D

I went straight to home depot and bought the closest thing they had that I needed, a 12" threaded rod. I brought it over to my neighbor to see if he could help me cut it but after much deliberation we found another way to attach the came to the stage and now its all good :)

By the time I got it set up I had to leave for church so I gave it a quick whirl which is going through combine ZM as I type.

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Post by rjlittlefield »

Excellent. What did you come up with to attach the camera to the stage? Can you show us a picture of it?

--Rik

yeatzee
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Post by yeatzee »

rjlittlefield wrote:Excellent. What did you come up with to attach the camera to the stage? Can you show us a picture of it?

--Rik
Well it was a "duhhh" moment. Instead we used a hole which was not threaded and put in a 1/4" 20 screw with a big head upside down through the hole and threaded in the battery grip of my camera :)

Here's the first image:
http://photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13132

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Post by rjlittlefield »

yeatzee wrote:1/4" 20 screw with a big head upside down through the hole and threaded in the battery grip of my camera
Aha! I didn't think there would be enough space for a screw head inside the body of the stage. Given that there is, that sounds like an excellent solution.

--Rik

Planapo
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Post by Planapo »

You are getting very good results from the start with your stage and the 28 mm lens you are using.

yeatzee wrote:
Well it was a "duhhh" moment. Instead we used a hole which was not threaded and put in a 1/4" 20 screw with a big head upside down through the hole
Funny thing, I had a similar duhhh moment a while ago with my Newport 42X stage. It needed the help and comfort of my "American godfathers" :wink: to get access to that hole, though. :D
In that thread there's a link (first post, first line) to an older thread opened by Charlie Krebs on a Newport 42x stage. You may find some useful info and inspiration there.

--Betty

P.S.
And at the end of page 2 of Charlie's thread, dang!, all of a sudden :smt031 there appears totally unexpected extra bonus amusement with some strange stray snowy owl, Canadian goose, ibex etc ... :lol:
... a whole bestiary, obviously lost their ways in cyber space.
LOL, priceless! :smt044

Sorry Rik, I hadn't seen those before!

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Planapo wrote:And at the end of page 2 of Charlie's thread, dang!, all of a sudden :smt031 there appears totally unexpected extra bonus amusement with some strange stray snowy owl, Canadian goose, ibex etc ... :lol:
... a whole bestiary, obviously lost their ways in cyber space.
LOL, priceless! :smt044
Oh, that is hilarious! Sort of...

Of course what happened is that the author of that post chose to host his images at photobucket, not here at photomacrography.net. That worked great until he or photobucket happened to overwrite the images or delete them and reuse the file names. The result is that the post here is completely trashed.

As a keeper of the forum I am only briefly amused when this happens. I presume it's not deliberate vandalism, but the result is the same. The problem gets worse over time. I have run into numerous threads in the older archives where all the images are gone because they have disappeared from some third-party hosting service. I understand the issue -- no doubt it seems an unnecessary bother for someone to learn about uploading here when they are already familiar with procedures somewhere else. But it's still frustrating. :(

--Rik

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