wide angle macro: a new 3-D printed adapter for lens combo

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wide angle macro: a new 3-D printed adapter for lens combo

Post by rjlittlefield »

This crossed my screen today:

https://petapixel.com/2022/08/26/photographer-3d-prints-25-wide-angle-macro-lens-using-cctv-camera/

The setup places an M12 CCTV lens in front of a 4X microscope objective. The M12 CCTV lens forms a wide-angle real image "in the air" behind it, and the 4X objective then relays that image back to the camera's normal sensor.

Design is posted online at printables.com: Wide-angle macro photography using a CCTV lens and 4x microscope .

--Rik

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Re: wide angle macro: a new 3-D printed adapter for lens combo

Post by Scarodactyl »

Looks like fun. I got a box of c mount security camera lenses at our local flea market a while back, maybe one of them would work for this.

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Re: wide angle macro: a new 3-D printed adapter for lens combo

Post by rjlittlefield »

If you play with it, I'll be interested to hear the report.

Lens combos like this are vulnerable to vignetting caused by light rays from the front lens hitting the rear lens so far off axis that they miss the entrance pupil of the rear lens. I'm pretty sure that the system linked above has this problem, because the CCTV lens is described as 132 degrees FOV, while the images don't look nearly that wide angle but they are obviously vignetted.

If that problem is what's responsible for the vignetting, then the design could be improved by adding a properly chosen "field lens" near the intermediate focal plane where the aerial image forms.

But the problem will vary depending on the design of the CCTV lens, in particular how nearly telecentric it is on the image side. I suspect that will vary quite a bit from one lens design to another, with corresponding differences in how well each particular CCTV lens works.

--Rik

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Re: wide angle macro: a new 3-D printed adapter for lens combo

Post by MarkSturtevant »

A clever variation on this sort of lens! I have my rig, which uses a reversed wide angle lens, but this version would be a lot lighter and cheaper. As he says, it is very challenging since the images come out inverted.
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Re: wide angle macro: a new 3-D printed adapter for lens combo

Post by kaleun96 »

Much cleaner and lighter setup than what I tried last year, might have to give that a go sometime. Though with mine I had a degree of variable magnification. To solve the inverted image problem, I mounted my phone upside-down to the camera and used the Sony app to see a live view. Can't recall how well it worked though, been awhile since I used it.
2aaaa.jpg
- Cam

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Re: wide angle macro: a new 3-D printed adapter for lens combo

Post by lothman »

rjlittlefield wrote:
Sat Aug 27, 2022 6:12 pm

But the problem will vary depending on the design of the CCTV lens, in particular how nearly telecentric it is on the image side. I suspect that will vary quite a bit from one lens design to another, with corresponding differences in how well each particular CCTV lens works.

--Rik
Your post made me curious, I have got printed the adapters mentioned in your link and have the cctv lens on order. But I do not expect much about image quality. I will show some results.

As far as I understood, a 4x microscope lens is used to project the tiny image plane of the cctv lens on a camera sensor. And since it can adjust extension of the CCTV lens we can focus very close. Rik would you assume that using a fisheye lens from micro four thirds (with much bigger image circle and probably better optical design than a 5$ CCTV lens) and a 2x macro lens achieve better results? Do you think it's worth a try?

regards
Lothar

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Re: wide angle macro: a new 3-D printed adapter for lens combo

Post by RobertOToole »

Rik,

Didn't Morfa (PM.net contributor) do something like this years and years ago with a 8mm CCTV lens and a relay lens and do a report here?

From what I can recall he had some nice results!

Your memory is usually a lot better than mine!

Best,

Robert

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Re: wide angle macro: a new 3-D printed adapter for lens combo

Post by RobertOToole »

Found it:

viewtopic.php?t=40229

Not 8mm, only 2.1mm FL!

Thread refers to this from Morfa:

https://www.makrofokus.se/blogg/2016/9/ ... sheye.html


Also from Morfa, in english: https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnhallm ... 4444663445


Super results!


__Screen-Shot-2023-10-07-at-9.13.57-AM.jpg

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Re: wide angle macro: a new 3-D printed adapter for lens combo

Post by rjlittlefield »

lothman wrote:
Sat Oct 07, 2023 5:31 am
As far as I understood, a 4x microscope lens is used to project the tiny image plane of the cctv lens on a camera sensor. And since it can adjust extension of the CCTV lens we can focus very close.
That matches my understanding.
Rik would you assume that using a fisheye lens from micro four thirds (with much bigger image circle and probably better optical design than a 5$ CCTV lens) and a 2x macro lens achieve better results? Do you think it's worth a try?
It's worth a try, but the scaling up will introduce some extra restrictions.

What makes the linked system work for macro is that the CCTV fisheye lens has a short focal length and very little glass in front of the entrance pupil, so the lens can be placed close to the subject. The lens is also physically narrow, which makes it less intrusive for the subject and allows a wide choice of viewpoint.

Fisheye lenses for larger sensors and higher quality have longer focal length and also have more glass in front of the entrance pupil, so they cannot be placed so close to the subject. As an example, I have an 8 mm fisheye lens that is 180 degrees on full frame and somewhat less on APS-C because it crops on the short axis. When extended by a few mm so as to focus on the front element of the lens, the field width on APS-C is still over 40 mm on the short axis, in the plane of focus. Even ignoring the large diameter of this lens, I think it would be difficult to approach the subject close enough to get a strong up-close-and-personal impression.

--Rik

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Re: wide angle macro: a new 3-D printed adapter for lens combo

Post by MarkSturtevant »

I had attempted to create a version of John Hallman's relay fish-eye a while back:
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=43417&p=273115#p273115 But it was not that great. The quality and focal length of the cctv lens was presumably at fault.

I had later re-built the body of that contraption and used a different cctv lens: ImageRelay2.0 by Marcoli Sturtevantione,

The image quality could have been better, but it wasn't terrible:
ImageCicadaRelayLensPS by Marcoli Sturtevantione, on Flickr
ImageRelayLens5 by Marcoli Sturtevantione, on Flickr

I had also tried the peep-hole fish-eye lens trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dmEY2izZpk but I wanted to use it with the above rig. That was some years ago and it apparently did not work since I have nothing on it.

Finally, I had recently stumbled on this approach: https://petapixel.com/2020/01/27/buildi ... acro-lens/ which seemed very interesting since it could result in an electronic aperture on a wide angle macro with either a fish-eye lens attached to the end, like ones from Opteka, or one could go without the fish-eye effect by instead adding the front glass of an old wide angle kit lens like the Canon 28-80mm. The history with that is that ubiquitous lens is easily converted to a macro lens by taking off the front glass. Only here you use the front glass of this lens, or of a similar lens, to give a wide angle effect.
So what I did as a preliminary is attach my Canon EF-S 24 mm that was used above to a small extension tube, and found that it was a pretty darn good macro lens with aperture control on my full frame camera, without significant vignetting since the crop sensor lens was extended from the full frame body. So maybe if I attach the front glass of an old wide angle lens, or an Opteka fish-eye lens, I might have me some wide angle macro with electronic aperture (and maybe without inversion?).
It's another project for this winter.
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Re: wide angle macro: a new 3-D printed adapter for lens combo

Post by RobertOToole »

John Hallmen has an updated post on fisheye macro lenses and he shows some updates and new examples of his work!


Really brilliant stuff!


I used Chrome to browse the link since they have a built in translator, the blog post is in Swedish.


https://www.makrofokus.se/blogg/2023/3/ ... makro.html



__John-H.jpg

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Re: wide angle macro: a new 3-D printed adapter for lens combo

Post by MarkSturtevant »

That is great! Thank you for the update on that. So what he has shown is that you can put in a macro lens directly onto a camera, and adapt a Raynox and then the CCTV lens on that.
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Re: wide angle macro: a new 3-D printed adapter for lens combo

Post by RobertOToole »

MarkSturtevant wrote:
Tue Oct 24, 2023 8:04 pm
That is great! Thank you for the update on that. So what he has shown is that you can put in a macro lens directly onto a camera, and adapt a Raynox and then the CCTV lens on that.
Yes. Makes me want to try! I really like some of his results.

When or if you give it a try Mark dont forget to report back.

Best,

Robert

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Re: wide angle macro: a new 3-D printed adapter for lens combo

Post by lothman »

I tried the setup described in the initial post of Rik (3D printed adapter for the 4x Amscope and a CCTV lens). My findings were the CCTV adapter was too long so that I could not get focused. After shortening it shows that on full frame the vignetting is severe and the image quality limits the results. I would say results should be scaled down to max 1,5 Megapixels otherwise they are very soft. May be I give this a try with another CCTV lens what shows a bigger image circle. The mirrored result makes adjusting free hand in the field very demanding.

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Re: wide angle macro: a new 3-D printed adapter for lens combo

Post by MarkSturtevant »

I got better results with crop sensor in that I could get rid of the vignetting. The quality of the cctv lenses probably varies a lot, and I suspect (with very little experience, actually) that if one goes for a more extreme wide angle fish-eye cctv lens like 180^o, the quality goes down. I used 3 of these lenses, all in that range, and they were not exciting. They are not expensive, but all that experimenting did add up.
I don't know exactly what some of the specs on the lenses mean, but I will take as gospel that what John Hallman says is the thing to try to do. So I would look for a lens that is 2.0 - 2.1 mm (does that mean the aereal image lands at that distance behind the lens? and ~ f/1.6 or less (so the smaller f-stop in these things means they are ...? Anyway, those specs would be what I would look for.

But some of these cctv lenses say they are something like 16mm (what does that even mean?) And they give a Megapixel value like 5 MP (no idea what that means. Maybe the size / resolution of the chip that sits behind the lens?).

There are other lenses that are slightly more expensive (but still cheap so maybe try), that use the larger C-mount or CS-mount thread. I am wondering if these tend to higher quality. But that ventures into the Unknown.
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