Use of 3D-printer in close-up photography

[Lex Augusteijn]

Hi,

I just started with close-up photography and consulted the great website www.closeuphotography.com to get started.

I did obtain the Scanner-Nikkor 7 and 14 elements lenses on Ebay, as well as the AmScope generic plan 4x objective.
Next, I needed to mount them on my Canon full frame camera.
For the objective, I used a standard M42-RMS adapter and an EOS to M42 adapter together with some EOS extension tubes:

For the scanner lenses, instead of following the mount instructions on closeuphotography.com (which are great by the way) I decided to use my 3D printer to print some mounting parts.
This turned out to work great. I just printed a piece that clamps the scanner lenses on one side and is an EOS mount on the other side.

The proper distance to the sensor can easily be obtained by stacking a couple of extension tubes.
This creates a very modular system, where different lenses require just their own printed adapter and a stack of extension tubes.

Next, my printer is a Prusa I3 MK3, which is an open source printer.
The specified resolution in the Y direction, which is the print-bed moving forward or backward, is 10 micrometers.
So I decided to try using that as a stepper by just placing the camera on the bed.
The control board of the printer happened to have a free output port, which can be controlled to trigger the shutter.
Flashes are then controlled through the camera with a remote on the hot shoe.
So I checked out the firmware, added a menu entry to set step size, range, flash delay, etc.
One problem was that the printer was collecting micro-steps into larger ones for the sake of speed, so that had to be disabled.

For illustration, the attached image of a hornet was obtained from 585 images, taken with a step size of 10 um, and stitched with Zerene Stacker.

If anyone would be interested, I could share the design of the EOS mounts (which are easily modified for other brands like Nikon), as well as a patch for the Prusa firmware.

Cheers,

Lex Augusteijn

[dolmadis]

WoW that is excellent progress.

Speaking for myself I would certainly like ask you to share both 3D Prints and the Firmware Patch to the Forum.

Best

John

[Lou Jost]

Very clever and efficient! Congratulations.

[Lex Augusteijn]

I would like to upload some OpenSCAD files for the mounts I mentioned above.
Is there a file upload feature on this forum?
In attachments I can only upload certain file types.

[rjlittlefield]

I would like to upload some OpenSCAD files for the mounts I mentioned above.
Is there a file upload feature on this forum?
In attachments I can only upload certain file types.

In general, this forum has disabled uploads of everything except small image files, due to concerns about server capacity and potential malware.

For the files that you want to upload, what is the file type (extension) and the file size (kilobytes)?

--Rik

[Macro_Cosmos]

I would like to upload some OpenSCAD files for the mounts I mentioned above.
Is there a file upload feature on this forum?
In attachments I can only upload certain file types.

You can simply apply for a dropbox or gmail account, you get several free GBs of storage space, more than enough for most CAD files. It's around 2 for dropbox and 15 for gmail (I think).
Then share the link.

[Lex Augusteijn]

In general, this forum has disabled uploads of everything except small image files, due to concerns about server capacity and potential malware.

For the files that you want to upload, what is the file type (extension) and the file size (kilobytes)?

--Rik

3 files, extension .scad, total size 7kB, when zipped together 3 kB (yes, small files still exist!).

Lex

[Lex Augusteijn]

You can simply apply for a dropbox or gmail account, you get several free GBs of storage space, more than enough for most CAD files. It's around 2 for dropbox and 15 for gmail (I think).
Then share the link.

I know, and I do have a DropBox and Gmail account, and I could also host them on my website and link to it.
But that gives me the burden to keep them alive, which is overkill for less then 7kB.
I think a forum should be self-contained, otherwise dead links will certainly occur.

Lex

[Chris S.]

Lex,

Very nice contribution to the community!

We have a FAQ: 3D models started and mostly used by Saul, but available to anyone:

We can use this thread as a list of resources, and links out to discussions in the main forum.

In this FAQ, Saul has been storing the files at the site www.thingiverse.com. So far as I know, this seems to be working well.

Perhaps you might place your file at thingiverse, and post a link to this thread in that FAQ?

--Chris S.

[Lex Augusteijn]

Lex,

Very nice contribution to the community!

We have a FAQ: 3D models started and mostly used by Saul, but available to anyone:

We can use this thread as a list of resources, and links out to discussions in the main forum.

In this FAQ, Saul has been storing the files at the site www.thingiverse.com. So far as I know, this seems to be working well.

Perhaps you might place your file at thingiverse, and post a link to this thread in that FAQ?

--Chris S.

Thanks Chris,

Good suggestion and nice topic!
I will put my stuff there and link from here.

Lex

[Lex Augusteijn]

I was unsuccessful in registering at Thingiverse. When I tried, there email was down, as a result I could not finish the procedure, neither create a new account for my mail address afterwards.
After 4 complaints and not a single response, i gave up.

So I did put the designs for the EOS CoolScan lenses mounts at my own website in the end.
You can download them from here (images, scad sources and stl files).

http://lex-augusteijn.nl/EOS_CoolScan_Mounts.zip

Lex