Lenses for macro on Linhof Tecknikardan

**aduncanson** · 28-Feb-2011, 09:26

Vizion,

I strongly recommend that you mount a short enlarging lens on your camera and start experimenting in the magnification range that you are considering. Or, just play around with the applicable equations: 1/F= 1/So +1/Si, So = (1+1/M)F and Si = (1+M)F.

At 10X, fine focus on the rear standard seems unlikely to be very helpful. When you move a 50mm lens forward on the helical mount by just 1/10th of a millimeter, it shortens the object distance by that amount, and the image distance then lengthens by 10mm. Just how much range do you expect to have on your rear standard fine focus mechanism? (By the way, I think that the kind of lead screw driven fine focus you describe is built into some Sinar standards. I have no detailed information on how those work.)

I was recently playing with a pair of Cambo monorail cameras ganged together to give me about 40 inches of rail and more than 30 inches of bellows. To get up to about 9x magnification I used an 80mm enlarging lens mounted backwards on the Cambo lens board. I used three of the Cambo standards and the two bellows to make up the camera and used the fourth standard as a subject stage. It was handily adjustable in position, pitch and yaw. Using north window light, I suffered exposures of about 5 seconds on HP5+ due to bellows factor and reciprocity failure. This while stopping my lens down only to f/5.6 to minimize diffraction. The whole rig was made up of off-the-shelf components and could be duplicated for about 500 USD today. Dan described replacing the Cambo rail with some type of square stock, which is probably desirable if only because it allows even longer extension.

Focusing was, of course, done by adjusting the position of the subject stage, and was a challenge because my arms are quite a bit shorter than was my rail. For cheap and dirty, a flexible extension shaft might help a lot. I can imagine that your subjects might not tolerate having their stage moved about to focus and hence Dan's suggestion of moving the camera as a whole seems attractive. But obviously that presents difficulties because of the mass of your rig.

The enlarging lens I employed was the well respected 80/4.0 Beseler HD reportedly identical to one of the recent Rodagons. The resulting negatives seemed pretty good when viewed through a loupe, but might not stand up to a high degree of enlargement. Dan reports that his Luminars, etc., are far superior to enlarging lenses in his experience and I have no reason to doubt him.

Best of luck - Alan

**Dan Fromm** · 28-Feb-2011, 09:47

Alan, so you'll know, my shorter Luminars are better than any of the enlarging lenses I've tried. My 100/6.3 Luminar wasn't good at all, was much worse than a known good one I borrowed from Charlie Barringer. To his and my great surprise, a humble $12 4"/5.6 Enlarging Pro Raptar tested as good as his 100 Luminar from 1:8 to 4:1. I didn't test either at higher magnification. My 100/6.3 Neupolar was better still, a 90/6.3 CZJ Mikrotar that I eventually sold to Charlie was as good as the Luminar.

I use the Wolly much more often than the Neupolar because it is much easier to use. Part of this is that I often have trouble seeing the Neupolar's aperture setting in the field, part is that I can attach my wonder-working miraculous flash bracket to the Wolly but not to the Neupolar.

What's wonderful about the bracket? Simply that it gives good exposure from 1:5 to 2:1 with the same aperture set. Saves thinking.

In general, with these beasties the shorter the lens the sharper.