For this series of tests I have used an old technique dating back to the film era using vintage lenses. This method uses a 200mm telephoto lens (in this case an M42 mount Takumar (Pentax) 200mm f5.6 lens) attached to the camera with a wide angle lens (a 24mm f2.8 OM mount and a 21mm f3.5 OM mount (both Olympus lenses)) reversed and attached to the front of the telephoto lens. This gives quite a powerful close-up combination as you will see. The subject matter is the same dead flower head as in the previous post or the steel ruler for estimating the magnification (all the values given are approximate):
First up is using the 24mm OM lens attached to the 200mm telephoto. In this first set the telephoto is set to infinity.
In this second set the telephoto is set to its closest focus point (2.5m) – here I am just showing the ruler for the magnification:
I then switched to the 21mm lens attached to the telephoto set to infinity focus. This has increased the magnification a little to the same as the 24mm on the telephoto set to 2.5m:
The ruler showing the degree of enlargement is pretty much the same as the 24mm lens. Now I will show the modest improvement in magnification with the telephoto at 2.5m:
The final lens I wanted to check was using a 55mm Takumar lens attached to the 200mm lens in the same manner:
Again a worthwhile exercise. To me this demonstrates that quite decent results can be obtained from using vintage lenses paired together providing care is taken although a continuous range of magnifications cannot be obtained. Practice and good technique is a pre-requisite!
Here is a summary table – note that these are approximate results for my lenses, camera and setup – yours may differ:
| Lens | Focussing | Magnification |
|---|---|---|
| 80mm Macro Lens | closest focussing | 1x |
| 80mm Macro with Raynox 250 | Closest focussing | 1.6x |
| Componon 50mm | Bellows 140mm | 2.4x |
| 8x microscope objective | Bellows 140mm | 10x |
| 200mm + 55mm | infinity | 3.7x |
| 200mm + 55mm | 2.5m | 4.3x |
| 200mm +24mm | infinity | 7.8x |
| 200mm +24mm | 2.5m | 9.5x |
| 200mm + 21mm | infinity | 9.5x |
| 200mm + 21mm | 2.5m | 10.7x |