Lens stacking macros

I was experimenting today with stacking lenses and started out with my 77mm ltd and stacked a 43mm ltd on top.

I also made up an adapter to attach my AF-080C ring flash to this rig.

I am only about 2' away from the subject when taking these shots and it can be very tricky achieving focus, especially as these were hand held.

Camera was in manual, stacked lens (43mm) was wide open, 77mm lens was at f22, flash set to 1/4 power with -2 flash compensation, shutter speed at 180sec.

What do you think :

These have been marginally croped, just to remove some vignetting.

[IMG]http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x261/ClarkyinAus/_IGP1695.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x261/ClarkyinAus/_IGP1688.jpg[/IMG]

I'm glad they're macro shots Clarky!

Considering the juggling you must be doing to focus, they're pretty damn good!

What size are the beasties?

Thanks HG, Not too much juggling I was using catch in focus, by moving my head back and forwards a few millimetres, with little margin for error, and I missed more than I hit.

Ken, they were both about 10mm's in size.

Does anyone know what the magnification would be on this setup :

Names and addresses removed to protect the guilty...

Clarky here is an idea (Daniel Bridge dont read this), I made a film about the taxidermists in the natural history section of a large national museum. One of their tricks with small reptiles, I'm thinking this might work with insects, was to give them a whiff of ether to keep them still.

Take care however since ether was one of the components of the wet collodion process, the great Victorian photographer, George Washington Wilson became adddicted to it; perhaps the first known example of solvent abuse.

Just a thought.

Ken

Something like 77/43 I think so 1.8:1 (ish).

Nice shots anyway Clarky - love the eyes on that spider!

I'm not with what you mean by stacking. Do you mean your mounting one lens in front of another?

Yes he does. Attach the longer of the two lenses to the camera and reverse mount the stacked lens using a dual male filter thread adapter, otherwise known as a stacking ring.

I thought about trying something like this a while ago, but couldn't figure out how to keep the iris open!

What are the advantages of Stacking over using extension tubes? I thought using two lenes would be like a TC and reduces the available light, were tubes did not?

You need a lens with an aperture ring, that's why the DA's aren't any good for this sort of thing.

Makes sense, hadn't thought of that.

Thanks Ken but spraying insects with ether sounds a little risky, I may end up spraying myself and falling asleep on an ants nest


Stacking will give you more magnifcation, I used 2 lenses with large apertures (f1.9) and struggled with too much light from the ring flash. (as the settings mentioned above clearly state), I avoided stopping down the stacked lens and left it wide open, which gave me a bright viewfinder and made it easier when composing a shot,

Heres a shot of the setup I used
[IMG]http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x261/ClarkyinAus/_IGP1716.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x261/ClarkyinAus/_IGP1715.jpg[/IMG]