Someone, reasonably, pointed out that my previous 'ultimate cheap
macro studio' wasn't as cheap as all that, given it's based on one of
the 20mm Zuiko lenses.
So, inspired by Dean's doing the same thing, I picked up an old 7mm
wide-angle Elgeet lens for 8mm film [1] and reversed it. In keeping with
the cheap spirit of things, I used a jam-jar lid to mount it on.
The lens I got, for some reason, had a threaded metal insert in the
'outer' end, which made mounting it trivial; I just drilled a 7/16" (if
I remember) hole into the jar lid and screwed things into place:
http://www.danielmitchell.net/sgal/galleries/E330/macro2/0_lens_assembly_before.jpg
Next step; take an old junk 2x converter, remove the lens mount,
Dremel extra bits off, and epoxy that onto the back of the jar lid:
http://www.danielmitchell.net/sgal/galleries/E330/macro2/1_lens_assembly_before.jpg
http://www.danielmitchell.net/sgal/galleries/E330/macro2/2_lens_assembly_during.jpg
(notice how even though the hole isn't dead center on the lid, when I
epoxied things on, I could center it relative to the mount. It turns out
that probably doesn't matter too much anyway, but it's nice to try).
Final result:
http://www.danielmitchell.net/sgal/galleries/E330/macro2/4_lens_final_mount.jpg
Total cost: $10 for a junk 2x converter, $5 for the lens, nothing for
the jamjar lid.
But what's that I hear you say? $10 is too much to spend on a 2x
converter that you're just going to discard? Well, then, use a body cap.
But what if a body cap is still too much expense? Well, don't use one of
those either... Warning: the next photo may not be suitable for those of
a weak constitution:
http://www.danielmitchell.net/sgal/galleries/E330/macro2/3_lens_ultimate_cheap_mount.jpg
(and, yes, it worked fine like that; no light leaks, I think because
the lid was coincidentally just the right size )
Some resulting shots here:
http://www.danielmitchell.net/sgal/index.php?gallery=./E330/macro2
Field of view is something around 2mm across (so "18x magnification"
in 35mm terms); depth of field isn't a whole lot, but it's certainly
more than nothing, and working distance is half an inch or so. Lighting
works much better if I hold a bit of white paper above the E-330 to
bounce the builtin flash around, but it works okay without that.
It's surprisingly difficult to find things that small to take photos
of; most man-made things don't have detail at that scale, so I mostly
have texture or unexpected crinkliness to go with. As it's still winter
in these parts of the world, there's not a lot of plants to take photos
of for now.
I'm not sure if
http://www.danielmitchell.net/sgal/index.php?gallery=./E330/macro2&image=hair.jpg
(the lens mounted on a 65-116 tube this time around) actually shows
the individual scales on the hair or if it's just a weird artifact or
dust or something..
Does anyone know why closeups of metal have strange rainbow effects?
http://www.danielmitchell.net/sgal/index.php?gallery=./E330/macro2&image=needle_eye.jpg
has a distinctive pattern of coloured specks on the surface -- it's
not CCD noise, so is it just diffraction effects or something optical
like that?
-- dan
[1] Is that a 7mm 8mm lens, or an 8mm 7mm lens?
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