In interests of full disclosure: have an M645 Auto Bellows N kit for sale on BS.
Ok, with that out of the way.. The bellows unit is a nice bit of kit. Well made, nicely laid out, easy to use, assemble and break apart. Fine focus gearing on standards and twin bottom rails is smooth with no backlash or slop. Lock firmly. It\'s not the most upper-end kit like say a $2500 Silvestri Flexicam, but whoever designed it was w/o question a photog.
What is nice about it that doesn\'t get much air-time is that in addition to tilt, you can swap for bag bellows (rare but out there for about $300) in about 5 minutes -- and the unit\'s bottom rails (both of which have fine focus gearing and lock knobs) can be unlocked and placed at 90 deg to one another so entire camera and bellows can be \'fine-focused\' left or right, without moving ballhead, etc., to get the position just as you see fit.
Had never used one before and with 10 minutes of playing with it (who reads instructions?), 5 minutes to mount and adjust and first (crude) test shots were like - holy #$%^. Was seeing detail I didn\'t even know was there. That was with an 80mm and just a hair of extension. Did a follow-on shot using rig with my M645 120/4 Apo that took things to a whole new level.
That said, reverse-mounting a lens like the 55mm with something like 4.5+:1 fully extended magnification would be unreal.
If you\'re into macro work, I could see how a nice bellows kit could start a very costly habit ;>
Jun 03, 2009 at 01:32 PM
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