Steve's Crazy Macro Rig

Ladies and gentlemen! Here for your delectation and amazement is the first public appearance of the most crazy, ridiculous macro rig that any reasonably sane person could expect to see in their lifetime!

It all started with the realisation that whenever the urge to do indoor macro hit I was actually spending more time setting up and dismantling bits and pieces in the kitchen than taking photos. In the interests of domestic harmony, the only possible location for a more permanent macro rig was in a spare bedroom on the corner of my desk that is also home to a mini-PC, big screen, hifi, a tangle of electronic thingies and cables and all the other junk that needs to be on a bloke’s desk.

There were challenges:
• Space – max 35x35cm, too small for a readily available off-the-shelf rig (which in any case costs £lots)
• Stability – the desk sits on carpet on floorboards, vibration is a problem.
• Orientation – must be easy to change between horizontal and vertical.
• Elevation – when horizontal, camera must be high enough for flowers on Mrs L’s houseplants (without damaging them, of course).
• Assembly/disassembly – must be easy to assemble/disassemble in case the spare bedroom actually needs to be used as a bedroom.
• No custom-made components – I have neither the time, technique nor tools to make them.
Solving them involved trial and error over a few years. The rig, which was created from readily available photographic accessories and wild flights of fancy, is now complete (until I decide otherwise). So to celebrate the momentous event, here is Steve’s Crazy Macro Rig in its full glory. A following post will provide a technical summary to help unboggle your mind. Enjoy!

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Steve

Impressive! How did you deal with vibration damping?

And here’s the technical summary...

The rig is built on a base board from my heap of ‘might be useful one day’ bits of wood. This is tightly clamped to the desk with standard photographic clamps with threaded attachment points. Everything else is tightly attached to either the board or the clamps, so the distance between camera/lens and subject doesn’t change (much) if there are vibrations from the floor or table.

The heart of the rig is a geared head (Manfrotto 410) attached to a clamp on the L-R centre-line of the board. When the camera mount is horizontal, the camera is high enough for flower photography. When the camera mount is vertical (as illustrated), a pillar can be attached to hold the camera at an appropriate height. The pillar is an Arca-Swiss sandwich comprising two 30cm Arca-Swiss plates held together by Arca-Swiss clamps (a single plate is too flexible). To maximise stability and minimise vibration, the pillar is fixed in place top and bottom. From the top, two bracing poles run to clamps at corners of the base board (mini ball heads are soooo useful!). At the bottom, a nifty, minimalist L-bracket anchors the pillar to an Arca-Swiss clamp that is screwed to the base board.

Precise positioning of the camera is achieved by using suitable focus rails (not shown in the pictures). With horizontal orientation, crossed rack ‘n pinion rails allow X-Y positioning, with Steve’s amazing protractor, torch ‘n specs gizmo (see link, two posts separated by a few others) giving extra precision for focus stacks. For vertical orientation, vertical positioning requires a rotating screw rail (gravity is not your friend with a vertically oriented rack ‘n pinion rail...).

For positioning the subject, a cheap lab jack is held in place by two metal rails (edging for a kitchen work surface) attached to the base board by bolts and wing-nuts. The position of the lab jack along the rails can be adjusted. A hole drilled in the top plate of the lab jack enables a range of holders for the subject to be mounted (or simply put the flower pot on the plate). With a vertically mounted camera, precise X-Y positioning of the subject is needed. This is achieved by means of a pair of cheap focus racks mounted on the lab jack. With a horizontally mounted camera, only vertical positioning of the subject is needed (the camera can move in X-Y). This is achieved by the lab jack, supplemented by fine adjustment of the geared head if needed. For either orientation, lead weights placed on the lab jack (see pictures) increase stability.

As for lighting, the clamps holding the base board have mounts for poles to which contraptions holding lights, reflectors etc. can be attached. In addition, a long cheese plate (metal plate with lots of threaded holes) is clamped to the desk behind the board, giving other options for poles and lights. Lots of options!

So there it is. A compact, flexible macro rig that’s easy to take apart and rebuild. And almost every bit of it can be used for something else if I ever get bored of macro. Crazy – but it works.

Feel free to ask questions. But even better, try building a crazy rig yourself, it’s fun!!!

Steve

Does the above help? The basic idea was to make everything move together so distance between lens and subject doesn't change if the desk shakes. Bracing, clamping and added weight then reduce internal (to the rig) vibrations to a tolerably small level. It seems to work.

Steve

My apologies, I somehow misread your post. I was thinking whether you would add rubber feet to the rig or some other isolation but you have made it super-rigid instead.

No need for apologies, I'm just pleased that somebody has found my crazy construction project interesting . There's a fascinating thread on a specialist macro/micro forum in which someone is trying to eliminate vibrations by isolating their rig from its surroundings (link). It includes a great picture of his eventual solution - big, heavy rig suspended by bungee cords from an even bigger metal frame . I'm not in that league (and wouldn't want to explain to the insurance company why the bedroom floor has collapsed!). My approach mirrors that of another poster in that thread: "Eventually I solved all my vibration issues by swapping nearly all the squishy things for a heavy, rigid base... with everything very securely coupled to it".

Steve

The rig in that link looks like something from the mad professor's lab!