A travel macro stand setup

Have questions about the equipment used for macro- or micro- photography? Post those questions in this forum.

Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau

Scarodactyl
Posts: 1616
Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2018 10:26 am

A travel macro stand setup

Post by Scarodactyl »

A friend of mine recently asked me to put together a travel photography setup for him since he will be going overseas for a bit. He currently has a Wild M7 which he gets good results with but isn't exactly portable, plus he was hoping to improve overall image quality (the M7 does show some axial CA and hey, it's a stereo). His target was 0.5-1x. For reference he photographs gems and minerals, so a fixed stand for stacking is a good approach since you don't need to worry about anything wandering off.
I'd recently set up a 7 element scanner nikkor for a different friend's lab, where they needed to capture high quality, highly planar images of histology slides at about 1.4x, so I figured that was a good place to start. The narrow DoF does mean there will be a fair amount of stacking needed, but the resolution and color correction should be welcome after using a stereo. To cover lower mags I looked through what I had and found an El Omegar enlarger lens I'd picked up at a surplus store--not as high tier as a the scanner nikkor but Robert's test of it gave very encouraging results. Mounted forwards it seems to give nice results from 0.33x almost to 1x when stopped down to 5.6, hard to beat for the price.
Mounting the omegar was easy with the standard 39mm thread, but the scanner lens is characteristically more involved. Making a press fit mount with 3d printing is a good approach--the plastic at about 40% infill has just enough flexibility to grip the lens without risking any damage to it. I print the inner smooth diameter at 24.85 (nominally anyway, inner diameters print about 0.2-0.3mm tighter than specced). As is it comes out just a tiny bit tight, and I file it down until it grips the lens just right. Maybe not the most elegant turnkey approach but it's 2 minutes of extra work at most. The lens sits very firmly in the mount but its position can be adjusted with a little pressure. I put m42 threads on the outside, with the total adapter being around 25mm in length. This allowed it to thread all the way inside a generic M42 extender, giving it nice metal male and female threading. The 3d printed threads are good but there's no reason to push things. The RAFcamera adapter for this is priced very reasonably but even if it were free the shipping would have taken too long, and you don't get a filter thread.
Image
Image
I mounted the scanner nikkor on a 25-55mm helicoid. I wasn't enthused about trying this since the shorter m42 helicoids from China tend to be a little loose, but I was pleasantly surprised at how smooth the motion was on these and the lack of play. The eBay listing disappeared shortly after purchase but I imagine the same ones are sold elsewhere. With a bit of tweaking of the lens position within the mount the magnification ranges from about 1-1.6x. I also printed an m42-58x0.75mm so he could use a polarizer. I printed a press-fit adapter to mount one on the omegar as well.
Image
Now the stand itself. I had actually put most of this part together a few years back for my own first stab at a portable scope: a 50mm coarse/fine focus mount off of a video microscope (marked Made in Japan, maybe kwoya or miruc?), a 3/4 inch shaft with internal threading and an aluminum plate to bolt it onto.
Image
Previously I'd used it with an underwhelming kyowa macroscope, but I noticed the knurled ring on the outside of these generic M42 adapters is also 50mm--with the spacer screwed into a wider helicoid it sits perfectly in the mount. The fine focus is definitely needed with the scanner nikkor and helps a lot on the omegar too.
The whole setup disassembles in about a minute and packs down into a Pelican-style case for easy safe transport.
Image
Image
Overall it was a fun project, and it should be pretty expandable. I'm planning on putting together something very similar for myself.

RobertOToole
Posts: 2627
Joined: Thu Jan 17, 2013 9:34 pm
Location: United States
Contact:

Re: A travel macro stand setup

Post by RobertOToole »

Portable scope stand with a excellent range....nice job!

Nice and simple and reasonably priced.

The PL filter is a great idea also I've been using these on a lot of my shooting now, it was years since I last shot with one!

Best,

Robert

Post Reply Previous topicNext topic