Holey moley!!! DImage 5400 elite scanner lens. Just wow!

Have questions about the equipment used for macro- or micro- photography? Post those questions in this forum.

Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau

Beatsy
Posts: 2105
Joined: Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:10 am
Location: Malvern, UK

Holey moley!!! DImage 5400 elite scanner lens. Just wow!

Post by Beatsy »

My Dimage 5400 elite scanner arrived this morning and I've been playing with, err, I mean testing the lens since. I can't think of strong enough superlatives to describe it. Robert O'Toole praised it very, very highly and I expected great things as a result. But not THIS great! Wow!

From 1.3x to at least 2.5x (all I've tested so far) it is truly pixel-level sharp, right into the corners of a full frame sensor (42mpix, 4.5 micron pixels). So sharp in fact, trying to apply any kind of sharpening after the fact just spoils the image! Totally flat field, no pincushion or barrel distortion, no vignetting, and it lets in a lot more light than the DImage 2400 I last enthused about. How fickle I am :) I can't make a direct comparison as the 2400 has been shipped for a swap deal - but I don't really care. I am sat here with a big sloppy grin on my face - literally!

I've put the 5400 on an M42 focus tube, currently configured for 1x to 2.4x, but I'm going to add a spacer to push that range up to start at about 1.4x instead. There's corner mush below 1.2x on FF (though APS-C is fine). As Robert advised - if you need something around 2x, just get this!

I won't bore you with a bunch of test shots, but I've attached a quick snap of my new "MP-E 65 killer" to be going on with. Expect some stacks with this lens in the near future. In fact, I think I'll be loitering around the 2x mag zone for quite a while now :D

Happy, happy, happy.

Image

Beatsy
Posts: 2105
Joined: Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:10 am
Location: Malvern, UK

Post by Beatsy »

Here's the "maiden stack" of 130 images. These are all 100% crops with the downscaled main image inserted as an inset into each. Everything is exactly as generated by Zerene Stacker (PMax) with no adjustments applied in post (not even exposure, levels or sharpening - only cropping, scaling, and borders).

One very, very impressive lens!
Image
Image
Image
Image

mjkzz
Posts: 1681
Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2015 3:38 pm
Location: California/Shenzhen
Contact:

Post by mjkzz »

wow!

mawyatt
Posts: 2497
Joined: Thu Aug 22, 2013 6:54 pm
Location: Clearwater, Florida

Post by mawyatt »

Wow indeed :D

Best,
Research is like a treasure hunt, you don't know where to look or what you'll find!
~Mike

Lou Jost
Posts: 5944
Joined: Fri Sep 04, 2015 7:03 am
Location: Ecuador
Contact:

Post by Lou Jost »

That's great to see!

rolsen
Posts: 148
Joined: Tue May 01, 2018 1:21 am
Location: Finland

Post by rolsen »

Wow is an underestimate, but wow!

Smokedaddy
Posts: 1951
Joined: Sat Oct 07, 2006 10:16 am
Location: Bigfork, Montana
Contact:

Post by Smokedaddy »

... especially if you're lucky enough to snag one cheaply.

rolsen
Posts: 148
Joined: Tue May 01, 2018 1:21 am
Location: Finland

Post by rolsen »

Smokedaddy wrote:... especially if you're lucky enough to snag one cheaply.
Found one! Hey, wait a minute, how come...

“no power supply and no lens inside!”

Couple of those without lens for sale...argh!

Lou Jost
Posts: 5944
Joined: Fri Sep 04, 2015 7:03 am
Location: Ecuador
Contact:

Post by Lou Jost »

I think we'll be seeing a lot more of them with no lenses inside.

Beatsy
Posts: 2105
Joined: Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:10 am
Location: Malvern, UK

Post by Beatsy »

Indeed. Mine wasn't that cheap, but it was a fair price that I was more than prepared to pay. I wonder how many people worldwide will be after one for macro use? Whatever that is, I'm pretty sure they're only going to go up in price from here - especially because...

I'm currently testing at the extremes and my jaw is on the floor. There is an obvious comparison to make, and I'm about to make it (my memory might be playing tricks, so I need to carefully verify the result I'm seeing).

I'll leave that there as a teaser but will post the outcome to this thread later tonight. See ya soon...

Lou Jost
Posts: 5944
Joined: Fri Sep 04, 2015 7:03 am
Location: Ecuador
Contact:

Post by Lou Jost »

The suspense .....!!!

Macrero
Posts: 1166
Joined: Thu Sep 01, 2011 8:17 am
Location: Valladolid , Spain

Post by Macrero »

I predicted that :lol:

Btw, the guy who is selling the "gutted" one on ebay sold the lens not long ago:

https://www.ebay.es/itm/Minolta-DiMAGE- ... Sw77pa-bIH

He is a forum member, I believe.

I have to get one of those to test it, sooner or later...

- Macrero
https://500px.com/macrero - Amateurs worry about equipment, Pros worry about money, Masters worry about Light

cube-tube
Posts: 107
Joined: Tue Oct 10, 2017 7:50 am
Location: Durham, NC

Post by cube-tube »

Now look what you've done!! :roll:

Image

Beatsy
Posts: 2105
Joined: Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:10 am
Location: Malvern, UK

Post by Beatsy »

cube-tube wrote:Now look what you've done!! :roll:

Image
Not me guv! Blame Robert O'Toole. He should have kept it secret and PM'ed us individually - starting with me first of course :D

Beatsy
Posts: 2105
Joined: Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:10 am
Location: Malvern, UK

Post by Beatsy »

So - about pushing the limits. Despite only wanting the D5400 for circa 2x, it performed so well I just had to see how far it would go - wouldn't you? With 100mm of extension (ignoring the M42 to Sony adapter) it gives 3x. Lovely, as expected. With 140mm it gave 4x. Also lovely, jaw hits floor! Then up to 180mm and 5x. Good grief - it worked way better than I expected and I immediately though of comparing it to the 5x Mitty on a 200mm tube lens. So I did.

Sadly, this test is deeply flawed and unscientific, but you'll get the idea. I'll make my excuses as we go along.

First, the full-frame view with the D5400 at 5x-ish (just over 7mm FoV - 10 image stack).
Image

Now the Mitty on full frame with a Hoya 200/3.5 (M42) tube lens. I got this lens to push my Linoscan lens up to 2.1x on full frame (which works nicely), but it doesn't play so well with the Mitty. Lots of field curvature and clipped mush in the extreme FF corners, and I'd got the mag slightly out so the pics don't match exactly. This is the Mitty FF view - also a 10-image stack
Image

Obviously comparisons wouldn't be fair here, and I only ever intended to use the Mitty in APS-C mode on this lens anyway. So I decided to make it an APS-C scale comparison instead and cropped out the relevant areas. Here's the APS-C frames for each lens (still scale and placement mismatched). Note: I had to use a lot of unflocked tubes to extend the D5400 (ran out of flocking) so it really suffered with loss of contrast - the Mitty wins that hands down but I think it can be improved. This will have to do for now. D5400 first.
Image

And the 5x Mitty on APS-C
Image

And finally, what you really want to see. A couple of 100% comparison crops. The Mitty wins, but it's closer resolution-wise than I thought it would be and I suspect better contrast might make the D5400 compare even better. What do you think?

All images are unsharpened with exposure tweaked a little to match them better (the Mitty lets in a stop more light than the D5400).
Image

Image

In summary, even though Mitty wins, I'm still super-impressed that this comparison can be made at all, considering the cost and size differences between the lenses (and how far the D5400 is being pushed compared to the Mitty being right in it's sweet spot). But I can at least confirm that the DImage 5400 lens is super sharp up to 4x and still pretty useable at 5x (if you haven't got a Mitty to use instead).

Post Reply Previous topicNext topic