closeup photography: what possibilities in med format?

Hi all,
I want to know what choices one has for closeup and macro photography in
medium format?

Two criteria:
1) Cost. I cannot afford more than $300-350 for used camera + lens.
2) Flexibility and reliability. i would like to grow the system a bit over a
period of time.
3) Tote-ability. It shouldnt weight me down completely.

I currently own a Mamiya C330 with 80, and with a paramender, i do get
decent shots, but its slow, cumbersome work with this tank of a camera. I
like the square format and the waistlevel finder, but am very open to 645.

Any other options? Considering my budget constraints, i doubt if anything
beats my C330. Pentax 645 is very tempting, but lens seem pricey?,......The
Mamiya 645 is nice modular, but again.....

Many thanks in advance,
Sri

"curious dude" wrote:
Hi all,
I want to know what choices one has for closeup and macro photography in
medium format?

Two criteria:
1) Cost. I cannot afford more than $300-350 for used camera + lens.
2) Flexibility and reliability. i would like to grow the system a bit over
a
period of time.
3) Tote-ability. It shouldnt weight me down completely.

I currently own a Mamiya C330 with 80, and with a paramender, i do get
decent shots, but its slow, cumbersome work with this tank of a camera. I
like the square format and the waistlevel finder, but am very open to 645.

Any other options? Considering my budget constraints, i doubt if anything
beats my C330. Pentax 645 is very tempting, but lens seem
pricey?,......The
Mamiya 645 is nice modular, but again.....

The trick to closeups on a budget is closeup lenses on an SLR. Closeup
lenses provide much better image quality than one might think, especially
the (somewhat pricey) multi-element corrected ones such as the Canon 500D
and 250D. The 250D will get you to roughly 1/2 life size on the film, and
they can be stacked.

So if you can find either of those cameras used with the normal lens in your
price range, you're in business. (The bad news is that in medium format
extension tubes tend to be excessively pricey, real macro lenses
prohibitively expensive, and bellows units exorbitant.)

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

curious dude wrote:
Hi all,
I want to know what choices one has for closeup and macro photography in
medium format?

Two criteria:
1) Cost. I cannot afford more than $300-350 for used camera + lens.
2) Flexibility and reliability. i would like to grow the system a bit over a
period of time.
3) Tote-ability. It shouldnt weight me down completely.

I currently own a Mamiya C330 with 80, and with a paramender, i do get
decent shots, but its slow, cumbersome work with this tank of a camera. I
like the square format and the waistlevel finder, but am very open to 645.

Any other options? Considering my budget constraints, i doubt if anything
beats my C330. Pentax 645 is very tempting, but lens seem pricey?,......The
Mamiya 645 is nice modular, but again.....

I think you can get a Arax Kiev 60 kit plus the extension tubes and
shipping within your budget. Additional lenses are fairly reasonable. I'm
sure some will point out the Kievs reliabilty issues but mine work well.
They are also cheap enough you can get a backup body for the price of a
single extension tube for some other MF systems.

Nick

From: "curious dude"

I want to know what choices one has for closeup and macro photography in
medium format?

Considering my budget constraints, i doubt if anything
beats my C330. Pentax 645 is very tempting, but lens seem pricey?

I have a Pentax 645 and an excellent macro lens for it, the 120 mm. It goes
1:1 without tubes.

They also sell a set of three extension tubes, which I sometimes use on a
longer lens, especially the 300 f/4. Overall it's an excellent macro system.

1) Cost. I cannot afford more than $300-350 for used camera + lens.

This would be a problem ...

Nick Zentena wrote:



Any other options? Considering my budget constraints, i doubt if anything
beats my C330. Pentax 645 is very tempting, but lens seem
pricey?,......The Mamiya 645 is nice modular, but again.....

I think you can get a Arax Kiev 60 kit plus the extension tubes and
shipping within your budget. Additional lenses are fairly reasonable. I'm
sure some will point out the Kievs reliabilty issues but mine work well.
They are also cheap enough you can get a backup body for the price of a
single extension tube for some other MF systems.


http://www.geocities.com/kievgurl/hack.html

Shots of the P-6 bellows (about $100) on a K-60 with a hacked 35mm macro
lens installed. An enlarging lens would work well too. With a focal plane
shutter you can use about anything on it.
--

Stacey

In article , Stacey
wrote:

http://www.geocities.com/kievgurl/hack.html

Shots of the P-6 bellows (about $100) on a K-60 with a hacked 35mm macro
lens installed. An enlarging lens would work well too. With a focal plane
shutter you can use about anything on it.

Now _that's_ what usenet is all about. Resourceful, inventive ideas
shared. I was close to telling the poster that with his budget he was out
of luck. I love to be wrong in that way. Thanks, Stacey.

jjs wrote:

In article , Stacey
wrote:

http://www.geocities.com/kievgurl/hack.html

Shots of the P-6 bellows (about $100) on a K-60 with a hacked 35mm macro
lens installed. An enlarging lens would work well too. With a focal plane
shutter you can use about anything on it.

Now _that's_ what usenet is all about. Resourceful, inventive ideas
shared. I was close to telling the poster that with his budget he was out
of luck. I love to be wrong in that way. Thanks, Stacey.


You're welcome.

On mounting an enlarging lens, get a reversing ring (the kiev ones are 62mm
male threads) and a metal 62mm filter stack cap. Make a hole in the stack
cap for the enlarging lens and then screw the combo onto a reverse ring.
For their budget, an ARAX K-60, a pentacon bellows and an 80mm f5.6
enlarging lens should give them good results and even have TTL metering!

They might even be surprised as how well the 80mm arsat works reversed on a
bellows/ext tube. It's a sharp lens that works very well for close up work
but a macro/enlarging lens would be better.
--

Stacey

bilities in med format?
From: "curious dude"

Hi all,
I want to know what choices one has for closeup and macro photography in
medium format?

Two criteria:
1) Cost. I cannot afford more than $300-350 for used camera + lens.
2) Flexibility and reliability. i would like to grow the system a bit over a
period of time.
3) Tote-ability. It shouldnt weight me down completely.

I currently own a Mamiya C330 with 80, and with a paramender, i do get
decent shots, but its slow, cumbersome work with this tank of a camera. I
like the square format and the waistlevel finder, but am very open to 645.

Any other options? Considering my budget constraints, i doubt if anything
beats my C330. Pentax 645 is very tempting, but lens seem pricey?,......The
Mamiya 645 is nice modular, but again.....

Many thanks in advance,
Sri


If you can handle the view camera mentality a 2x3 Graphic camera works great.
Use any type of closeup lens. Cheap. But camera is sort of large. Lenses are
much smaller then most other medium format cameras.
Chuck

"Stacey" wrote in message
...
[SNIP]

On mounting an enlarging lens, get a reversing ring (the kiev ones are
62mm
male threads) and a metal 62mm filter stack cap. Make a hole in the stack
cap for the enlarging lens and then screw the combo onto a reverse ring.
For their budget, an ARAX K-60, a pentacon bellows and an 80mm f5.6
enlarging lens should give them good results and even have TTL metering!

They might even be surprised as how well the 80mm arsat works reversed on
a
bellows/ext tube. It's a sharp lens that works very well for close up work
but a macro/enlarging lens would be better.

The Rodenstock and Tominon macro lenses for the Polariod copy cameras are
fairly plentiful and make good macro lenses used like this. You can also
get them for not much more money with a leaf shutter, if you want the lower
vibration this offers.


Peter

(JCPERE) wrote in message ...
bilities in med format?
From: "curious dude"

Hi all,
I want to know what choices one has for closeup and macro photography in
medium format?

Two criteria:
1) Cost. I cannot afford more than $300-350 for used camera + lens.
2) Flexibility and reliability. i would like to grow the system a bit over a
period of time.
3) Tote-ability. It shouldnt weight me down completely.

I currently own a Mamiya C330 with 80, and with a paramender, i do get
decent shots, but its slow, cumbersome work with this tank of a camera. I
like the square format and the waistlevel finder, but am very open to 645.

Any other options? Considering my budget constraints, i doubt if anything
beats my C330. Pentax 645 is very tempting, but lens seem pricey?,......The
Mamiya 645 is nice modular, but again.....

Many thanks in advance,
Sri


If you can handle the view camera mentality a 2x3 Graphic camera works great.
Use any type of closeup lens. Cheap. But camera is sort of large. Lenses are
much smaller then most other medium format cameras.
Chuck

Close, but no cigar.

2x3 Graphic with Graflok back. The best (= least expensive) will be a
Century Graphic with NO range finder and NO lens.

Depending on magnification desired, 50/4.5, 75/4.5, or 105/4.5 Tominon
as fitted to Polaroid MP-4. These lenses screw into a #1 shutter,
have their own diaphragms. These lenses aren't up to the best macro
lenses, but they'll do.

If you want to work in the range 1:10 to 1:1 and aren't much
interested in going above 1:1, any decent six element roughly 100 mm
enlarging lens will do, but putting one in front of a #1 shutter
requires an adapter. Ask skgrimes.com about one. Given your budget,
a 105 Tominon is probably a better bet.

Copal #1 Press shutter as used on, yes, Polaroid MP-4.

Roll holder. If all you want to shoot is b/w and the emulsions
available in 2x3 from, say, jandcphoto.com will do you, a couple of
sheet film holders instead.

With care, you can get all this for less than $350.

I do basically this but with better lenses than Tominons. But the
Tominons will do, and below 1:1 its hard to tell the difference
between good and better lenses.

Cheers,

Dan