Thread: Not much depth of field...

Hi,
If you want the best optical performance for macro work but don't want the expense of dedicated macro lenses, bellows are the next best thing. Some bellows are made that allow you to reverse the lens and this is a good feature.
This puts the object closest to what was the rear lens element, and the film (now ccd) at a further distance from what was the front element of the lens.
Bellows can also have the advantage of having an inbuilt rack for fine distance adjustment.
On my old setup, I had twin cables on the cable release so that I could focus at full aperture, preview the image stopped down and release the shutter with one press on the button.
Having said all the above, if you really want to do a lot of macro work, go for a macro lens. My favourite was a Nikon 105mm, 1:1 to inf. with a twist of the wrist.
cheers

Originally Posted by 300+

The tubes were an impulse buy (I was shopping for a hot shoe spirit level) so I didn't research much.

Would a dioptre give this level of magnification?

Cheers, Steve

No - work on the fact that you had a 7mm coffee been right in front of the 35mm lens. At best the diopter closeup lenses will give about a 2:1 where as the tubes can give better than 1:1

Outside shots are harder. I managed not to get the web stuck to the lens, but the slight breeze meant it kept swaying and this was the sharpest I could get.



Cheers, Steve

PS the jpeg compression look really oversharpened....

For outdoor work i would only use a proper macro lense. How does the shrpness look in RAW without the compression?

Fuzzy is the short answer. It isn't quite in focus except for a couple of legs. However, I've been reading online about lab sharpening, which seems to have created a more realistic result, which is still quite sharp. There is also a lot of noise as this was at 800ISO. Knocking the noise back doesn't help with the shaprness...



Cheers, Steve