Close-Up Lens Recommendations For A Nikon D80?

Thank you for responding, Ray. I was hoping this would get your attention.

I still have my Chromega-D enlarger around somewhere, and a couple of the Omega and Rodenstock lenses. Not sure about the 75mm though. But I did some checking and as you say, the El-Omegar is cheap enough. But I am not familiar with using one with a bellows, so a couple of newbie questions:

1. Back in the day one expected that Rodenstock had the superior product over the Omega. However, among the 75s I checked, Omega has the faster lens (f/3.5 down to 22) vs the Rodenstock (f/4.5 down to 16). The Rode is about three times the price of the Omega with a narrower aperture range. Go for the Rodenstock anyway?

2. To fit the lens to the bellows or camera I will need an adaptor. M39 screw mount to ? (D?, AF?, ?) Most of the time this is just going to be used on the bellows, which is all manual so ANY M39 would work (if that is the correct size). But for my auto-rings and cam itself, will I get auto-function with the M39 screw mount to D? (That's hard to imagine, given the screw mount lens.) But I don't want to assume anything here, so I will ask. What size and type of adaptor?

3. I know from other posts that you have gotten superior results with apochromatic lenses (no surprise there). I'm shooting ancients, some of which have high relief, and at high mag one has to watch out for spherical aberration. I am inclined to tinker with the cheap lenses, but wonder if in the long run it would be better to bite the bullet and go directly to the apo? Then again, I saw a post in which austrokiwi and others compared results for several mid length special lenses: https://goccf.com/t/251274&SearchTerms=Nikon,D80

Not sure which way to go in all that.

Thanks again, Ray. Let me tweak this one last time before I start sending in the orders.

1.



I understood the point regarding maximum aperture. Since all ancients tend to have at least as much relief as a US dollar, I am inclined toward the lens that gives me the smaller minimum aperture, with the idea of stopping down and pouring more light onto the subject as needed. But when do I hit the diffraction limit?

Here is a 75mm El-Nikkor that will give me three stops below the minimum aperture of the Rodenstock:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/222071241355


Does that look good or am I reaching too far?



2.


On the second adapter type (M42-RMS) you lost me entirely. This appears to be for a microscope objective mount. How, again, am I going to use this?

Your first type (NikonF -> M42)

has three subtypes:

w/ glass only: http://www.ebay.com/itm/231733225429
(glass for infinity focus) when connected directly to the camera body.

w/glass and pins: http://www.ebay.com/itm/331776240466
(allows Aperture Priority setting) when connected directly to the camera body.
I don't see how having a set of pins in the M42 is going to change anything when it is attached to the front of the bellows.

with chip: http://www.ebay.com/itm/322053237327
(the chip for this model is for use with the Nikon 1 series. Not sure what kind of Dandelion chip exists for use with D80)

If I'm tracking correctly, the first adapter type connects the enlarger lens to the camera body or to the front of the bellows (Nikon F mount). I am presently using a Kenko N-AF Uniplus Tube 12 on the rear mount of the bellows so I can get a 90 degree rotation of the image field when the bellows is secured to the copy stand. The Tube12 has a set of pins for autofunction, but no chip and no auto either; I use it entirely in manual mode. Would that perform the same function as the pins in the adaptor. I don't see how having a set of pins in the M42 is going to change anything when it is attached to the front of the bellows.

Please tell me more about the utility of the chip. I saw a model intended for use with the Nikon 1 that has a chip (at $60) but I don't know that that would work for autofunction on the D80. I understand that the purpose is to allow use of the Aperture Preference setting.



Something else that looks handy is the M42 helicoid adaptor for ultra fine focus of the enlarger lens itself especially when used with tubes.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/381587595760




3.
I am so glad you mentioned focus stacking. I was not familiar with it, but it is just the tool I need to solve a problem in philatelic photography that has been bugging us for years. (Hard to imagine I'm sure.) I use Adobe Photoshop CS5 for image editing, and it has an auto-blend tool for working with stacked layers, including a special section for depth of field blending. I intend to explore this asap. However, to be on the safe and sure side, I also downloaded ImageJ specifically to work with whatever the latest and greatest plug-in for this might be. Wikipedia gave a nice big list of aps and plug-ins at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_stacking Do you have a particular recommendation for a favorite plug-in for use with Photoshop or ImageJ?



Your side comment on lighting changes defeating some resolution advantage reminded me that I need to hear from you on lighting too, when we are clear about the lenses.

Wow, I am really off my game this weekend! The chipped adapter I linked to contains optics to allow infinity focus. You do not want this! Most of the chipped adapters seem to have these, and if you end up buying one, you will need to remove the lens. Not usually a big deal, but the adapters with optics are often more expensive. Sorry for the poor recommendation.

Hah! I should have written out the diagram for this setup, because you are right about the chipped adapter. I was not thinking bellows when I wrote the recommendation. I was thinking extensions. With the bellows between camera and adapter, it will of course not work any better than a non-chipped adapter.

If your camera requires the chipped adapter to give the functions you want, you'll need to double-adapt. Here would be the order of components:

Camera -> Chipped Nikon-M42 adapter -> M42-Nikon adapter -> bellows -> Unchipped Nikon-M42 adapter -> M42-M39 adapter -> Enlarging lens

The M42-Nikon adapter would be like this one:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Macro-Nikon...JqGQ4w3NsZ_g

I must warn you...all these adapters may cause you problems with too long a minimum extension to allow your 75mm lenses to achieve a low enough magnification for framing larger coins. You may be OK without these extra adapters, but I think you very likely will have issues with the adapters in place.

To be safe go with at least 90mm. 105mm will work for sure for larger coins, but may not let you get much magnification on the other end. Since you already have the 75mm, you can use them for smaller coins or higher magnifications, so a 105mm may be your best bet. 150mm is quite long and will require very long working distance.

When you see an auction that says "step-up ring" pay very close attention. Usually these are for filters and the threading is not the correct pitch. What you want is 1mm pitch on both 42mm and 39mm sides. The pitch for filters is usually tighter, 0.75mm in these cases. Just make sure the threading is what you want. Also, I've never seen consistency in how they name these, so you must go by the pics.

If you're going the 105mm route, and don't want to spend much, I'd recommend the PZO 105mm Amar (not the Amar/S). This is another sleeper lens that I was planning to recommend to the group after the B&L 10x, but might as well do it now since we're talking 105mm lenses. The Amar is not as sharp as the 108LFOV or 110Scitex but it has almost zero long-CA and this gives a true-color presentation. Plus, they are super cheap, though you will likely have to buy them from an EU vendor.

I don't recall the brand name but I bought it years ago (late 70s). It has a 3 foot column and an adjustable spring loaded mount. At full extension the front of the lens would be 3.5-4 feet above the baseboard. I would have to have the camera image going into a monitor to see it. That is the extreme limit of course, and I have never been close to that, but I am sure to have enough room for the kinds of lenses we are likely to use.

As for stability, it has been satisfactory for my purposes for the past 40 years. I use a remote cable release.