Rodenstock Apo-Macro-Sironar 120mm f/5.6 vs. 180mm

[David Solow]

Hi All,

Background:
I'm wanting to shoot people's eyes. In fact, really just one eye, as closely cropped around the iris as possible and would like to enlarge these images as large as possible. Ideally as large as 40" x 40".

I understand that both the 120mm and 180mm are capable of 2:1 magnification. If the eye is approximately 1.5" square, that would give me a 3" x 3" image on the film at 2:1.


Questions:
1- How much bellows extension do you need for each lens at 2:1. I have a Sinar P2 and plan to get a Linhof MT3000.

2- Does image quality suffer as one goes from 1:1 to a greater magnification of 2:1?

Thanks,
David

[Bob Salomon]

120 has a FFL of 235.6 so 2:1 is 942mm of extension (37.1")
180mm is 356.5 so 2:1 is 1426mm of extension. (56.1")

[aduncanson]

I get 475mm for the 120 and 717mm for the 180.

2:1 implies 3x FL + (FFL-FL).

Bob seems to have used 4x FFL

[Henry Ambrose]

Think about lighting.
That's gonna be tough.

Might try it first with whatever lens you have now.

[Bob Salomon]

I get 475mm for the 120 and 717mm for the 180.

2:1 implies 3x FL + (FFL-FL).

Bob seems to have used 4x FFL

Thanks,

I should answer this type of question later in the day.

[sully75]

awesome Nick Nixon picture of his eye was up at the MFA in Boston and maybe still is. There's skin in the picture but mostly I think it's just his eye. The guy has his sh1t down. I believe it's an 8x10 contact print.

[Oren Grad]

awesome Nick Nixon picture of his eye was up at the MFA in Boston and maybe still is. There's skin in the picture but mostly I think it's just his eye. The guy has his sh1t down. I believe it's an 8x10 contact print.

The show closed the other day, after a run of many months.

I think it was an 11x14. The eye was nowhere near filling the picture, but even so it was a tour de force. I couldn't look at it without wondering how he pulled it off - or how many sheets he needed to pull it off.

[Joshua Dunn]

Keep in mind that 717mm is almost 29 inches and 475mm is 19 inches. Thats a lot of bellows extension. I have a Nikkor AM ED 120mm Macro and one of the reasons I like the lens is the shorter bellows draw it requires. I shoot on a Sinar so it's always easy to add more bellows but does make shooting a little more complicated when you are working around a camera rig that is almost 3 feet long.

Don't forget to calculate for bellows extension.

-Joshua

[David Solow]

Thanks, everyone for all the great information.

David

[sully75]

The show closed the other day, after a run of many months.

I think it was an 11x14. The eye was nowhere near filling the picture, but even so it was a tour de force. I couldn't look at it without wondering how he pulled it off - or how many sheets he needed to pull it off.

From what I remember, it looked like there was one softbox, from above. How he nailed the focus I don't know. Maybe just a ton of light so he could stop down enough to get a bit more DOF?

[David Solow]

Thanks, Sully, for the information. It gives me a starting point for my experimentation.

David

[sully75]

I haven't done much LF macro stuff, and none with artificial lighting.

But basically I think you'd need a lot of light, so you could stop down, to make your focusing a little less critical. A lot of light would be some sort of artificial light.

A ring light might work.

Again...no idea what I'm talking about!!

[Brian K]

Hi All,

Background:
I'm wanting to shoot people's eyes. In fact, really just one eye, as closely cropped around the iris as possible and would like to enlarge these images as large as possible. Ideally as large as 40" x 40".

I understand that both the 120mm and 180mm are capable of 2:1 magnification. If the eye is approximately 1.5" square, that would give me a 3" x 3" image on the film at 2:1.


Questions:
1- How much bellows extension do you need for each lens at 2:1. I have a Sinar P2 and plan to get a Linhof MT3000.

2- Does image quality suffer as one goes from 1:1 to a greater magnification of 2:1?

Thanks,
David

I've done a lot of macro and would not recommend LF for anything bigger than 2:1 or 3:1. You are better off using MF.

Also someone mentioned that you would need a lot of light to do this in LF, that's true, but it's also really foolhardy and possibly dangerous to do so. This is someone's eye after all. If you use high powered continuous lights you're going to get a tiny pupil as it will stop down to adjust. If you use powerful strobes on a wide open eye you could potentially cause serious eye damage. So please give some thought to these facts before you proceed.

[jeroldharter]

I wonder if models are known to suffer any occupational eye damage from strobe lights?

[sully75]

ok scratch what I said! Don't destroy anyone's eyes.

[Brian K]

I wonder if models are known to suffer any occupational eye damage from strobe lights?

The brightness of the strobes used in model or portrait shoots is quite a bit less than what would be required for LF macro work. Most fashion and portrait is DSLR or MF and usually you don't shoot beyond f 11 or 16 and there's little or no loss due to extension. For LF macro you could easily require f45 and there could be 2,3,4 stops of light loss due to bellows extension. That means that you could actually require a light output of f 128 and all that power in close proximity to the eye.

I did a lot of 8x10 cosmetics, food and beverage shoots over the course of 25 years. Usually shot at 1:1 and I can tell you that the power of the strobes and their close proximity is quite intense. Parsley would wilt after two exposures. And should they fire while you were moving something on the set, you would simply have to freeze in place and wait for a few minutes before you could see again.

[jeroldharter]

Brian,

I understand what you mean about the massive light needed for 8x10 macro. But I have strobes I use for portraits that are insanely bright for that brief pop of exposure. I was wondering what the thousands of pops a model's eyes might see would do to vision. I suspect not much. Don't see many blind former models as opposed to deaf former rock stars.

[Bob Salomon]

Brian,

I understand what you mean about the massive light needed for 8x10 macro. But I have strobes I use for portraits that are insanely bright for that brief pop of exposure. I was wondering what the thousands of pops a model's eyes might see would do to vision. I suspect not much. Don't see many blind former models as opposed to deaf former rock stars.

Models usually are looking at or near the camera. They usually do not look directly into the light.

[Brian K]

Models usually are looking at or near the camera. They usually do not look directly into the light.

Bob, in the case of beauty photography the light is usually very close to the lens, there are often fill cards concentrating and evening the light, and then there are many who use ring flash. But I've never heard of any eye injuries.

[Bob Salomon]

Bob, in the case of beauty photography the light is usually very close to the lens, there are often fill cards concentrating and evening the light, and then there are many who use ring flash. But I've never heard of any eye injuries.

But they don't look at the flash part of the ring. Usually they will look towards the center of the ringlight.

[Brian K]

But they don't look at the flash part of the ring. Usually they will look towards the center of the ringlight.

The area that you focus on, the area of maximum visual detail, the fovea, maybe looking at the lens, but all that bright light still gets in around it's periphery and hits the retina.

[sully75]

With a ring light, you are looking as close as you possibly could to the light...the only way it could be closer is if the lens wasn't there.