OT: Macro Lens Gloat

[macona]

Got a new toy last week. A Nikon AF Micro-Nikkor 200mm f/4D IF-ED lens. http://www.nikonusa.com/Nikon-Products/Product/Camera-Lenses/1989/AF-Micro-NIKKOR-200mm-f%252F4D-IF-ED.html

It came out of a piece of equipment meant to do QA on LCD screens. It a prety freeking awesome lens. Supposedly the longest macro made. Virtually zero distortion, CA, and anything else you can think of. Focuses up to 10" in front of the lens. Paid $625 for it. Stuck it on my Canon 60D with an adapter. With my canon it becomes something like a 300mm lens with sensor crop.

Ran through the yard today chasing a dragonfly and a honey bee:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/67292116@N00/sets/72157627041373036/

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5036/5871269322_ff70c77cef_b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/67292116@N00/5871269322/)
Bee and Clover (http://www.flickr.com/photos/67292116@N00/5871269322/) by macona (http://www.flickr.com/people/67292116@N00/), on Flickr

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3217/5871263288_7ec851f26a_b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/67292116@N00/5871263288/)
Dragonfly (http://www.flickr.com/photos/67292116@N00/5871263288/) by macona (http://www.flickr.com/people/67292116@N00/), on Flickr

[Evan]

That is a very cool image of the dragon fly.

My tiny Canon TX1 has a super macro mode that will focus right to the lens surface.

http://ixian.ca/pics8/ddlion.jpg

[Weston Bye]

Dragonfly? More accurately called a damselfly. They fold their wings as pictured when at rest - dragonflies don't. Also thier eyes are saparated more.

Great photo nonetheless.

[DATo]

You guys are making me sick. I've got a $100 Olympus digital that is so bad you can't tell the men from the women in family pictures. (It might help if the men didn't wear dresses.)

*Counts the hairs on that bee's head then throws himself to the floor in frustration*

[PixMan]

Nice lens, even if razor-thin depth-of-field. ;)

I have the AF-Micro-Nikkor 60mm f2.8 and love it. All you need now is a Nikon D700 or D3X to exploit the full-frame capabilities of the lens.

[aostling]

Supposedly the longest macro made.

I believe you are right, in that no macro lens longer than 200mm was made. There were a few other 200mm macros – Pentax and Canon had versions in manual focus mounts.

The only other auto-focus 200mm macro lens which I am aware of is the Minolta AF. It mounts directly on the current Sony DSLRs.

http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u183/aostling/Minolta200.jpg

[Smokedaddy]

... wish I could find one for $625 . You got a smoken deal.

-SD:

[Black Forest]

Where is fly swatter?

I admire you guys that can take good pictures. I don't have the patience to learn all that is needed. But I do like to look at good pictures.

Also I know myself well enough to know how addictive it could be if I really got into photography.

Nice pictures!

[RB211]

Were you shooting at F4? I am curious to see how much the depth of field will change on that lens at say F16 or F22. Of course then you'll most likely want a ring flash to go with it ;)

[macona]

Didnt know the difference between dragon and damsel. Thanks.

The shots were between f4 and f8. Even at that I needed to be at iso1600 to keep the shutter fast enough to do this hand held.

[uncle pete]

Macona,
Great score, I'd love to have one of those but that Nikon new price makes my hand shake a bit. Oh yeah, Great pictures too.

Pete

[Orrin]

I'm green with envy. I couldn't afford the 200 mm macro, so I settled for a lowly 4 megapixel Nikon 4500 that will focus down to about a half-inch. A couple of the pix on this page were taken at that distance. In real life the blossoms are about 0.050" in diameter.

http://users.moscow.com/oiseming/lc_ant_p/pic_Waw5.htm

Now that I have a Nikon D-90 I don't have a lens that can match the camera's capability; the design of 18-200 mm zoom I usually use with it is full of fuzzy compromises.

Enjoy that lens! It's a good 'un.

Orrin

[Frank Ford]

299 macro sounds like fun - good score! I have the 100, as well as others that will focus up right close. But, the telephoto macro has the advantage of giving lots of room for light between lens and subject. You'll enjoy using that one, I betcha.

[macona]

Yeah, it does seem to be a cool lens. I didnt even get it because of the macro. I just wanted a good lens in the 200mm range, and the macro was an added bonus. One thing I plan to do is piggyback it on the telescope. The nikon mount will connect right up to my Redlake camera (11MP, full 35mm sized sensor, used to shoot "Coraline"):

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5262/5822530725_22fc558fea_b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/67292116@N00/5822530725/)
Redlake EC11000 Camera (http://www.flickr.com/photos/67292116@N00/5822530725/) by macona (http://www.flickr.com/people/67292116@N00/), on Flickr

[jkilroy]

That is a great lens, and you got it for about half of what they go for.

[Your Old Dog]

If you like shooting wary bugs you got the lens to do it with. My Nikkor 60mm macro of years past required getting too close to bugs and many simply took off before I could shoot. I'm told Leica's 100mm R lens with adapter for my Canon 5Dii is a hot combination but I haven't found one at my price yet.

Have fun with the new bug shooter! Just don't turn that lens loose on women, they aren't impressed by stray hairs, pimples and black heads showing in their pictures :D

[sasquatch]

Beautiful pictures, thanks for posting them, and be sure to drop a few more here occaisionaly------ surface finishes,,,drill and cutter tips,, things like that.

[Evan]

I wonder how close my telescope will focus? That's something I haven't thought to try. With the movable mirror system it has a very wide focus range. That was meant to accomodate cameras and eyepieces with very different focus distances. Hmmmm....

[aostling]

I wonder how close my telescope will focus? Hmmmm....

I'll be interested in how this works out. In addition to the question of how close your Newtonian can focus, I wonder if spherical aberration will become more pronounced at close object distances. That would be discernible with a flat target, of newsprint.

[Evan]

It's a parabolic mirror so there isn't any spherical abberation. Also, mirrors have no chromatic abberation either.

[aostling]

It's a parabolic mirror so there isn't any spherical abberation.

I had no idea. You could indeed have the mother of all macro lenses there.

[Evan]

The telescope isn't set up rght now since it isn't dark enough to use it at night. When it is I will try some pictures to see how it works.

[small.planes]

Nice lens, I cant justify a proper macro lens, but I did get this 300mm Sigma lens very cheap.

http://i306.photobucket.com/albums/nn274/small_planes/SSC_4007.jpg
It has a 'macro mode' where it will focus down to 0.95m, between 200 and 300mm focal length. IIRC its about 450 on the crop from my D50.
One of the reasons it was cheap is that it has no motor, so relies on the body drive, which of course the newer 'consumer level' Nikon dSLR's no longer have.

I took this crappy photo with my phone, to show the setup:

http://i306.photobucket.com/albums/nn274/small_planes/DSC00031.jpg

And this is with the Sigma.

http://i306.photobucket.com/albums/nn274/small_planes/SSC_4035.jpg

This is a couple of parts for the head of that helicopter:

http://i306.photobucket.com/albums/nn274/small_planes/DSC_4641.jpg

Dave

[The Artful Bodger]

I wonder how close my telescope will focus? That's something I haven't thought to try. With the movable mirror system it has a very wide focus range. That was meant to accomodate cameras and eyepieces with very different focus distances. Hmmmm....


Doesnt your telescope have a secondary mirror blocking the centre of the image at close range?

[macona]

The secondary mirror becomes invisible at any useful. My 10" Meade scope can focus up to about 30-40 feet away. You can see pretty decent detail in leaves when I tried it and it hadnt been fully collimated after shipping.

Dave, you can get closer if you add some rings between the lens and the camera. The lens I have also has the screw drive for autofocus. But with its short DOF I probably would be manually adjusting it anyway. I put the specs into a DOF calculator and it told me I have a .003" DOF at f4 and 10" from the lens.

Of course using it as a telephoto would be a different story.

[The Artful Bodger]

I have a few mirror type camera lenses and none of them can show me the image of a fly sitting on the front of the secondary mirror.:rolleyes:

[Evan]

The secondary doesn't matter. The mirror has a view around it regardless. I expect that I might be able to focus to about 100 feet or so, maybe closer. It has an angular resolution of about half an arc second. At a distance of 100 feet that works out to a resolution of about .003".

[macona]

Eventually as you get close you will loose resolution near the center of the image from the secondary. How close this is will depend on the setup.

[aostling]

"Just one more thing," as Columbo used to say.

A parabolic mirror will focus incoming parallel rays at a point. A parabolic mirror is therefore the ideal shape for an astronomical telescope, for which any object is (for all practical purposes) at infinity.

But if the object is close the rays will be divergent. In this case, the perfect mirror surface is elliptical. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipse#Elliptical_reflectors_and_acoustics


If a light source is placed at one focus of an elliptic mirror, all light rays on the plane of the ellipse are reflected to the second focus. Since no other smooth curve has such a property, it can be used as an alternative definition of an ellipse.

I don't know if using an elliptical reflector would have any detectable advantages over a parabolic reflector, for imaging objects at, say, ten yards.

[The Artful Bodger]

I am not sure that long focal length is what is really required for macro work...

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5313/5879283732_e7eabb12ef_b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/25239206@N06/5879283732/)
macro (http://www.flickr.com/photos/25239206@N06/5879283732/) by aardvark_akubra (http://www.flickr.com/people/25239206@N06/), on Flickr

Distance from camera flange to lens flange is about 235mm, distance from front of lens to object is about 40mm.

Lens is Helios 44mm 2/58.

Coin 0.7sec at F16, almost impossible to focus at wider apertures! Coin is a dime.

Computer ram 0.3sec at F5.6.

The light is natural winter sunlight on a rather cloudy day and was fluctuating quite a bit.

[macona]

Ooo. Core memory....

A long focal length means you dont need to get right in the face of the item you are photographing. With the lens I have to get 1:1 scale subject to film you only have to get 10.2" away from the end of the lens. With, lets say, the 60mm Nikon macro you need to be about 2" from the end of the lens to get the same 1:1.

If you are photographing critters they might not like to be that close to you! It also allows more light in as you are not shadowing with the lens, camera, and yourself.

It also makes a nice telephoto.

And at 4lbs with magnesium construction, it makes as a good self defense item.

[Evan]

I don't know if using an elliptical reflector would have any detectable advantages over a parabolic reflector, for imaging objects at, say, ten yards.

The problem with an elliptical mirror is that is is only good for one distance, the distance between the foci.

[aostling]

The problem with an elliptical mirror is that is is only good for one distance, the distance between the foci.

Quite right. Makes me wonder if an elliptical telescope was ever constructed for some specialized task. I would guess not.

[macona]

Just ran across this, there is a telescope with a elliptical primary mirror. A Dall–Kirkham telescope or a Modified Dall–Kirkham telescope. They use and elliptical mirror with a spherical secondary. Supposed to be better than a Ritchey–Chrétien.