Lens Adapters

[Curious]

I just purchased the extension tube set (after Millera9 mentioned them) and they are really great, particularly for the small amount of money you pay for them.

what she said. well the just purchased part at least. they should be here the first of next week.

and BTW you can all talk about hardware until you’re blue in the face but i’m not buying anymore this year. period.

and millera9 i’m expecting some high vote pictures from these or i’ll be looking to you for relief. 🙂

sleeping am going to shoot a couple more rolls with the bellows just to see what happens. the film i’ve got is old (expired 7/2004) which might explain the color problem but not the sharpness issues.

[Curious]

ok, first of all sleeping i’m not shooting any more film for now. my extension tubes came yesterday and today i shot some tests. here are some results on my flicker page.

the first two photos are for reference sake. if you look real closely at the truck photo in full size and scroll over near the that chrome tie down you will see the piece of bark and on it the bug that is featured in it’s own photo. that bug is roughly 3/4″ long including the legs and antenna. the body is about 1/2″. when i shot that with the bellows none of the photos was anywhere near as good in so far as detail or sharpness. the color for both film and digital seems a bit off but that may well be me. there has been no post processing.

the tripod that is sitting in the back of the truck isn’t any good for the weight of the camera/tubes/lens and my big tripod won’t get low enough to that flower without reversing the center post. found out just how unusable the tripod is doing the flower shots. the flower shot at F9 lacks detail but the others all had too much movement. yeah even using the remote shutter release.

one other interesting (to me at least) thing about these shots is the exif data reports the focal length the lens was set to. it’s a 18-70 zoom. the exif didn’t pick up (or wasn’t effected by) the extension tubes. all three were used for those shots. also the camera worked fine in full auto mode although i ended up doing manual focus. exposure was left to the camera except when i selected smaller apertures for more DOF. i was able to stop down to f32 on the bug at 1/25 but should have used the shutter release along with the big tripod.

i’ll probably do another set sunday morning using the big tripod and shutter release. so far i’m hyped about how these work.

[sleeping]

Hi Curious, I’ve only used my bellows on a heavy tripod or copy stand indoors. I haven’t done much >1x magnification stuff outside, and that’s all been done with reversed lenses, teleconverters and extension tubes.

There’s a lot of room for vibration with bellows, I think – that’s probably where the unsharpness is coming from? Being rigid, the tubes probably are a bit more stable. It could be a difference in mirror vibration, too – my XE-7 seems a lot worse in that regard than my old X-700 which died, despite being quite a bit heavier.

One of my current projects is trying to figure out good ways of using flash for macro work, I’ve seen plenty of results from other people that prove it’s possible, and it ought to help address vibration and the shutter speed vs. aperture issues I almost always get working outside, but so far the results have mostly been, shall we say, less than stellar….

[Curious]

i was hoping the 7D would have a mirror lock up like the XD-11 does but if so i haven’t found it.

have you thought about one of those ring flashes? the ones that go around your lens. be a bit pricey unless you do a lot of close up work however.

[sleeping]

It seems like only the most pricey dslrs have miror lockup for picture taking (the D70 has it but only for sensor cleaning…) I didn’t realize the XD-11 had it though.

I actually have a cheap vivitar ring flash, it was the first thing I tried. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that well for me. Unless you’re shooting something very flat, getting the flash that close to the subject causes serious light fall off into the background:

Some people like this effect, I guess, as you do see it quite a lot. Not much to my taste though, I think I need a really big flash and some kind of reflector or diffuser….

[Curious]

It seems like only the most pricey dslrs have miror lockup for picture taking (the D70 has it but only for sensor cleaning…) I didn’t realize the XD-11 had it though.

ooops – you’re right the XD-11 doesn’t have mirror lockup. it does have the built in eyepiece cover but that’s it. and the only other minolta i’ve owned was a SRT-102 and i don’t remember it very well. i do seem to remember using a mirror lockup on a few occasions but it was many years ago. or i could be nuts.

the 7D has the mirror lockup for sensor cleaning only. you do that through a sub menu in software.

[Curious]

there are 5 more pictures here a couple showing how close the front of the lens is to the flower. the small flower is normal, the bigger two macro. that was with all three adapters.

there are scattered clouds with rain today so i didn’t get to do all i wanted. it’s going to take a while before i learn just what these will and won’t do.

[Author]

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