Peter Figen Offline Upload & Sell: On
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Highest performing macro lens for reproduction ratios below 0.5x | |
mjm6 wrote:
Back in the day, I had a Colorgetter Falcon drum scanner, so I understand what you are saying with this.
My experience with the CG scanner is also why I am intersted in the overscanning impact that the pixel shift on the new Fujifilm XT5 could possibly do. Changing the sampling aperture with the drum scanner showed a remarkable impact on the sense of grain and the smoothness of the overall scan (plus tradeoffs with sharpness) and I'm interested in how I can use the different camera to achieve similar impacts in the scans.
This is interesting because it's a part of the reason I went with the Rodenstock. I already had a Novoflex bellows system that I was using reversed enlarging lenses on with pretty good success - at least for shooting macro images. When I got the 100s in the spring I tried scanning film using a converted Beseler 45 enlarger, and the Sigma 70mm ART macro on the 100s, and while the results were okay, they were not stunning, and that's a pretty darned good lens. Through reading about a bunch of different options I came across the Rodenstock, and at first I balked at the price, but then I found it at Linhof Studios for a full three grand less than B&H was hawking it for (so much for B&H have the best prices) and bit the bullet, and every time I use that lens I'm utterly amazed at the results.
But part of what led me to that was also the fact that at some point in the future, Aztek will not be around or they won't have any parts left for the Howteks and it'll be the end of the line for those. I wanted something that would and could compete with the drum down the line, or just when I don't feel like mounting film.
It's possible that the Laowa 2X Macro might be sufficient for you but there's only one way to find out. The biggest hurdle for doing this is keeping the film flat and keeping perfectly parallel to the sensor. Here's what seems to be working for me, but others have other solutions too. I'm using the aforementioned Beseler 45 enlarger where I've taken all the enlarger stuff off and bolted a Manfrotto 410 gear head to. I have a Just/Normlicht 5000K lightbox under that and had a roughly 8x10-ish piece of 3/16th glass cut to put on top of the lightbox. I found that there was just a bit of sag in the plexiglass in the box that made it hard to keep film flat. Then I use the Clinometer app in my phone to measure the glass, which I'm taping the film to, and then the Manfrotto to match those measurements to the camera and lens, which, on the Novoflex, are independently adjustable. Having that one tenth of a degree accuracy with Clinometer in the phone seems to work well, but, as always, focusing accurately at 1:1 and closer is a challenge that can take some trial and error to get perfect. And you can't really stop down to cover slight errors as you're already two stops down at 1:1 and into diffraction territory even wide open. Not much, but barely. You can go to f/8 but at 1:1 that's f/16 and you do see the degradation at that point. On some film it matters and with other film it won't, depending on the film and the subject matter.
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