Plastic "ribbon"

[rjlittlefield]

First, the images...

Full frame:



Upper right corner, 100% actual pixels:



Now, the story...

I accidentally made this stuff today, thought it had an interesting appearance, and took the opportunity to make sort of an odd self-portrait.

Say what? "Self-portrait"?!

Well, yeah, sort of.

What you're looking at are actually the waste shavings from a drill bit, step three in making the lens-holding adapter that was used to make the picture.

Here's the setup for the images above. (Yongnuo YN-460-II used as slave flash to fill in the right side of the frame, while the camera's onboard flash does more on the left.)



That gray adapter holding a Raynox 250 in front of the Canon A710 camera started off as a solid rod of plastic. To make a hole through it, I started off with a 3/4" spade bit, turning the plastic rod in a lathe. The plastic ribbon is what came off each side of the bit, folded in various ways depending on feed rate and so on. Each ribbon is about 7 mm wide.

From a photography standpoint, what's interesting here is the almost complete lack of chromatic aberration with this closeup lens setup. While it might appear that the images above are B/W, in fact they're full color JPEGs straight out of the camera with no corrections other than focus-stacking and resizing. This is very pleasing performance!

With the Canon A710IS at full optical zoom, the closeup lens gives me a 21mm field width with 125 mm working distance, essentially identical to what I get with my Canon 100 mm macro lens on my T1i at close focus. Zooming wider gets me out to about 58 mm field width without vignetting, still at the same 125mm working distance.

The reason I'm interested in this combo is that it gives me what promises to be a nice setup for backpacking, less than 18 ounces for the whole set including cases and spare batteries.



We shall see...

--Rik

[Harold Gough]

What you're looking at are actually the waste shavings from a drill bit, step three in making the lens-holding adapter that was used to make the picture.

Phew! That's a relief. For a while I thouight you were into dress-making!

Harold

[rjlittlefield]

Phew! That's a relief. For a while I thouight you were into dress-making!

I've done that, at least helped with bits and pieces. It's very satisfying when everything works right, but I have to say that fabric is more challenging to deal with than my usual engineering materials!

--Rik

[pierre]

What a simple and effective setup.
A good surprise there.

Thanks for your experiment

[Rusty]

White inside barrel ? edit light gray

Would flocking improve iq in this case ? i presume the lens extends to very close to the diopter , so maybe no large improvement ?

[Cactusdave]

This really does work remarkably well. The first image needs only a couple of tweaks to make a really nice 'abstract ' print. Great image for little money ( though for a person like myself with the practical skills of a wombat, the technical expertise in creating the adapter is priceless ). I think the brilliantly simple lighting also really helps to make this image, and that's a nice stand to have just lying around as well!

[Harold Gough]

Does the tube length also give the Raynox an off-camera role as a loupe?

Harold

[rjlittlefield]

Rusty, I would not expect much improvement from flocking. Certainly there are reflections off the sides of the adapter unless the camera is zoomed to full telephoto. Those are easily seen by zooming the lens to wideangle. However, reflections from the adapter are just like light that would come from out-of-view areas of normal scenes when the camera is used by itself. The camera contains baffles that work effectively on that light, and they work just as effectively on the reflections.

CactusDave, thanks for the kind words. HERE, BugEZ has shown us another version of the same idea that more people can do themselves.

Harold, the Raynox is a nice 2X handheld magnifier. But if you're thinking of hands-free work, the lens alone is too heavy to hold between cheek and eyebrows.

--Rik

[rjlittlefield]

that's a nice stand to have just lying around as well!

That old stand has seen a lot of use! It's described in more detail HERE, and you can see it making a minor and uncredited appearance in Figure 6 of a Lepidopterists' Society Newsletter article from 2005. The stand and its modification for fine movement stretches back to the late 1960s, when I was first getting involved in high magnification photography and needed something for fine focusing in a vertical setup. I still use it frequently when convenience is more important than rigidity.

--Rik

[SteveGreen1953]

Without your explanation I would never have guessed that these were shavings.

Nicely done!

[rjlittlefield]

Thanks -- those shavings looked pretty spooky coming off the lathe, too!

--Rik