Best Bellows Setup For Canon 450d

Ken
I have a Nikon and got an extension tube and am very happy with it. Try googleing extension tube for your camera model and there are some cheep options for you. Bellows are good but unless you spend a bunch they are very cheap. The tube usually has 3 different lengths and will allow different sizes of pics. E-mail me if you want to discuss this more.

There are cheap ones that are manual like the one that I got and ones that will allow for automatic operation but cost alot more.

While one chases the dream of a good picture, one is confronted by, the price of the current glass/lenses which are very expensive, and are tailor made for the current camera format...Much like today's computers are tending to feel you are obsolete with your old gear....with computers, this is very true....with lenses, if you have the savy...its NOT TRUE... for the simple fact that, very good lenses have been made for MANY MANY YEARS....50 years plus,
the thing of today/ or the most under stood term is "plug and play.....for computers it means the new hardware will work seamlessly as you add it into you computers hardware or perifials, but reality has shown its most likely a real headache we are all to famliar with..
the one thing that has been UNIQUE with cameras, is there are adapters which will allow older lenses with are known to have high qualitys but will not mount to newer camera's, Hence for the

UPGRADE idea we all know... THE GOOD NEWS is there are many old lenses with the use of the bellows which will result in very fine Macro pictures for coins with out spending the Megga bucks for the newest lenses out there, at well over $1400 plus bucks meant to be used with the newest high dollar equipment...
The bellows is an instrument which will extend the length of the ANY lens...Further from there intended use....with out going into the fact that all cameras, intentions are to have, in general the lens
image be in proportion to the image sensors,, this is why there are the 1:1 one to one representaitions for expensive lenses ?YET, the bellows can fine tune an immage, of older lenses just as well as new lenses at far less the costs...

For any image it really depends on the shot your trying to achive,,,,this is the most important thing of any lenses attribution or use... coins are a flat surface with a non backround issue...yet the dept of field is so precise, to photo a coin with total focus from rim to center is very hard to do...
For a flower one may only want to focus on the very center and care not of the backround..
A bellows offers Extreme veratillity and extreme magnification and clearity of any subject.....
and there are adapters which will allow ou to use new or old lenses
for you too seek the best picture you can produce, some are limited my make of camera, but here are a host of options for
non Nikon or Canon uses

I made a recommendation last week for this combo:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SPIRATONE-B...em460488e8ab

75mm is my favorite length for bellows work. I do NOT recommend long lenses, especially for bellows, so for instance I would not recommend the following:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SPIRATONE-M...em27c7976815

I am very fond of Vivitar Bellows, which are T-Mount and easy to adapt. Here is one with a Vivitar 75mm lens that would work well for coins:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vivitar-Mac...em4ab8c02ebb

The above setup also comes with the macrophotographic stand, which can be very useful for higher mag photos but won't take the place of a good copy stand.

For almost any reasonably priced bellows you will need adapters for your camera.

Ray

I will check your links and follow up before I buy.

They're (probably conservatively) rated for 50k-ish actuations.

Can I ask the benefit of bellows over extension tubes?

It has been some years since I shot and then I just used dedicated lenses.

From a previous post...

The advantage of the bellows is you can adjust the magnification in fine increments. Let's say you want to exactly fill the viewfinder with a Dollar. You can do that with the bellows. This assumes the lens is long enough and/or the bellows has short enough minimum distance to get the magnification you need.

Tube extensions do the same thing as the bellows except they can't be adjusted in fine increments. You need to accept the magnifications the different combinations give you. If the combinations give you what you want, all's good. But this is a big disadvantage if you want to shoot a Dollar and the magnification is just a little too high and makes the Dollar over-fill the finder, while the next adjustment down only half-fills the finder. You can mitigate this by buying a longer lens, which will give you finer adjustment for the same tube lengths. But you may need to buy two sets of extenders to get enough extension for smaller coins or varieties.

Fixed magnification is actually an advantage in the sense that it is easy to precisely go back to a fixed magnification setting. Your Dollars will all be the same size for every shot. This can save a lot of time, but only works if you can find that just-right length of extensions you are satisfied with.

One more comparison: bellows have integrated tripod mounts, but most extension tubes do not. This means you will need to mount the camera rather than bellows to the tripod or copy stand. So if you use the camera dedicated for coin photos, no problem. But if you are like me, and use the camera for other purposes, swapping back and forth becomes tedious and requires re-calibrating flatness and other parameters each time I want to take a shot. The fixed bellows setup is easy to swap the camera on and off and maintains its settings.

The risk you take with bellows is that your magnification will be too high because your lens is too short or bellows minimum length is too long. If you were mostly imaging Cents, this is no problem. But I've had issues with some bellows not being able to image Dollars with shorter lenses. From my experience, 75mm is about the shortest you can go with most bellows and still image Dollars. I have one bellows that won't work for Dollars with anything shorter than 80mm. So if you go the bellows route, and don't want to take the risk, 105mm is a safer bet. The longer lens will also give you more working distance and thus lighting flexibility.

Ray

Ken,

You are in the right place. Ray and SuperDave are the most patient and best teachers around. I went from shooting with a point and shoot with "okay" images, to now having requests from people to image their coins when I post coin images on other forums. Take their advice, read the threads here in the Coin Photography section, and you will be up and running in no time.

Ray and Dave are saints....they never tire of answering and re-answering the same questions....not to mention linking you to great items on ebay for great prices!

Cheers,
-Brandon