The S2 IS with an 80-200 f/2.8L?

Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D

04/09/2006 02:26:10 PM · #1

So I goofed on one of my challenge entries and forgot to switch the lens to none. Someone called me on it because he thought it was pretty funny.

Of course, little did he know that I've been thinking about this for a little while now as I'm still at least a month away from going DSLR.

This same person has made a friendly challenge to see what I can do with my camera (I didn't have the 80-200 then) to match his 60mm 1-5x macro lens.

I think that I've done fairly well... what do you guys think?

My setup is my S2 IS mounted on my main tripod (mostly shooting FULL telephoto), the 80-200 mounted vie tripod collar on my cheap tripod and shooting a Blue Bottle Fly (maybe) on a white paper background with a Philips table lamp sporting a daylight corrected 23W fluorescent bulb. I made some mistakes with White balance because I thought I was ok. It seems that once I put a diffuser (a plastic bag) over my light, I ended up decreasing the light enough that the room's main Fluorescent lighting started to impact the white balance. I would have done better to turn the main lights off, but it's already quarter after 2:00 am and I have work tomorrow morning...

Working distance was MUCH more flexible due to using a zoom lens with f/2.8 constant aperture as well as a manual focus ring.

Significantly higher magnification is possible with the 18-55 kit lens, but when I tried it, the results were apalling with regard to sharpness, lighting and vignetting. In fairness, it was partially handheld... Vignetting is important to watch out for with the 80-200 too... I find that when the magnification gets this high, there aren't a lot of things that are small enough to take pictures of!

I apoligize for the partial post, but it's very late and I have to leave very early tomorrow. I will try to update more later.

I'm very excited at how well these turned out.

These last two I'm curious to get feedback on the coloring. Sometimes mistakes turn out to look pretty good.

Thanks for the feedback! I hope you like them! I'm totally open to the most brutal of criticism. This is my first time!

Oh, please be somewhat forgiving of the sharpness and odd artifacting in the eyes. These are NOT present in the originals and I had to do several attempts on a few of the pictures to rescale the image size.

I found that the best was to be fairly aggressive at first in the resizing, then get finer and finer graduations as it get's closer to 640.

I think there were 12-15 steps for the full frame shots.

The most radically cropped of these pictures was cropped from around 2200 pixels down to 1200ish pixels to get rid of vignetting. I think it was the square crop pic.

Some of the others did not experience the vignetting but were shot at lesser magnifications.

Message edited by author 2006-04-09 14:30:27.

ShorterThanJesus

Nikon D300

04/09/2006 02:38:35 PM · #2

These are amazing!
I had no idea the lense-reversing method could give such good results. You've inspired me to try some of this for myself.

In your experimentation, did you find a way to extend the DOF at all? I have no idea how that would work with two lenses.

Tamron 70-180mm F/2.8 Di III VXD

04/10/2006 12:18:13 AM · #3

Would really love to get some feedback on which of the two you feel are better looking... The one with the green cast or the one without?

Thanks.

You should see what these things looked like at full crop. I am definitely going to have some prints made. Probably an 8x10 at least.

I love the expression on his "face".

As for the good results, I have a feeling that it helped a bit that I was using a wide aperture L lens...

As for DOF control, that is much harder as many lenses these days do not have on board Aperture control. On the other hand, if you are using a strong telephoto on your camera, you should probably be able to look past the vignetting caused by a smaller aperture.

I was only able to see past MOST of the vignetting at 72/80. (the lens on my S2 is 6-72mm actual) If I had been using a 100mm prime on a DSLR, I wouldn't be surprised if I could see past it. On the other hand, it's hard to say for sure. You might need MONSTROUS telephoto to look past the vignetting in a long telephoto lens.

I think that's why they recommend the 50mm. It's quite a bit shorter.

My neighbor still has his 85mm f/1.8, but I don't think my lens collar will work on that, but I was considering giving it a try.

Message edited by author 2006-04-10 00:22:23.

MadMan2k

Sony Alpha a6400

04/10/2006 12:27:09 AM · #4

Those look really good, nice work. I like the one without the color cast better, but I like the face close-up best of all.

I tried reversing my 70-210 but the image circle is pretty far away, my SD400 isn't long enough to anywhere near fill the frame with it and I don't think the 28-75 is either. Might have to crop to use that one, but with the 50mm I can put it right up against the 18-55 and have a little more portable setup anyway.

Tamron 70-180mm F/2.8 Di III VXD

04/10/2006 01:50:46 AM · #5

The 28-75 MIGHT be sufficient. I'm curious if it is or not.

Do you use the 50mm reversed on the 18-55 or the 18-55 reversed on the 50mm?

MadMan2k

Sony Alpha a6400

04/10/2006 02:34:55 AM · #6

Just tried it - at 75mm it's still not really long enough, but I can crop at least. The lens is so long that the distance from the acting front element to the subject is still not very much, even if the camera is pretty far back.
//jonbuder.com/temp/28-75.jpg

I usually put the 50 in front, it's a larger aperture and not an EF-S lens so the image circle is bigger. The 28-75 and the 50 would probably work too, but the front of the 50 scrapes on the glass of the tamron when I try that if I'm not careful... eek

04/10/2006 10:58:34 AM · #7

Good point! You always do such awesome work, I feel priveleged just to know that you liked it.

It was actually the curious focal length crop factor effect that led me to believe that I could make this work with my camera.

It seems as though my lens must be working at an equivalent of 400mm instead of the actual 72mm... This obviously means that my camera is going to be subject to the same quality limitations that a 6x crop factor camera will normally face, but hey, it deals with these problems in every shot it takes, so what is different? Nothing really.

At 432mm equivalent, I could zip the 80-200 right up to 80mm for max magnification, or slide it back down a bit to get less magnification, but much less vignetting.

I took quite a number of pics with my 80-200 at approx 135mm where there was no serious vignetting at all and I was able to get a frame-full pic with only a tad of light fall-off in the corners.

I hope to pick up a lens reverser that will allow me to keep the lens stable in relation to the camera. It was quite a chore trying to line up the centers of the lenses. Switching from portrait to landscape was a pain in the butt!

I will probably pick up a 50mm for my camera in a month and a half or something like that, so I will experiment with that. It will be nice to have a large image circle with much less to zoom through. The DOF might be a bit crazy though. Not as bad as it could be, I'm sure, as my DOF is calculated based on ACTUAL focal length, which is quite small.

Lots O Fun.

PS, USE FILTERS and don't scratch your glass! Because you are dealing with the other end of the lens, there will be much less oblique light coming in. This means that you will probably be OK with even a cheaper filter.

BowerR64

Canon PowerShot S3 IS

04/13/2006 01:31:12 AM · #8

SO your not mounting the lens to the camera? have you looked into trying to mount an SLR lens to your S2?

Nikon AF-S Nikkor 16-35 f/4 ED VR

04/14/2006 12:39:54 PM · #9

No, the lens was not mounted to the camera at all, it was independently supported by a 2nd tripod on the collar and I brought the camera up to the lens. I took a couple of setup shots, but they were a little crummy because my only other camera is my PDA cam and it couldn't handle the dynamic range. I might set it up again during daylight tomorrow. I'm feeling a bit lazy towards this though as it still likely represents a bit of work...

I'll see what I can do with the pics in PS from my pda. I've been working a LOT lately. (just got home at around 11:00 and left my house around 7:30 this morning... 3 jobs...)

It would be possible to mount the lens with the lens reversing doodle method, but I'm not sure if this is going to be a really sufficient method because it will push the two lenses apart, worsening the vignetting issue. Also, I haven't actually gone out and purchased that adaptor ring because I'm getting VERY close to buying a 30D and trying to keep balanced (been down to the shop a few times and almost bought it on the spot... twice). I am still thinking that a 50mm f/1.8 will be a great boon to this kinda of shooting for me (more magnification in the external lens means I get more control over my subject via on-camera lens and focusing. Of course, I prefer to do much of the focusing with the off-camera lens because it's just easier, but it's all ok), although I don't know if it has a tripod collar, so I will have to get creative there.

For all the irritation in using the two lenses without being attached, I still found that once I got the alignment correct, it was quite a joy to use.

Message edited by author 2006-04-14 12:45:43.

darnok

Nikon D850

04/14/2006 01:30:51 PM · #10

I've also done this by handholding a reversed Pentax MF 55mm 1.8 lens in front of my point and shoot camera. It all gets a bit shaky because I have to hold the 55mm lens. You can actually buy rings that you attach to the front of each lens, and then glue them together. Unfortunately I can't get any rings that that fit the small filter size of my camera (30mm).