Zhongyi (Mitakon) Super Macro Lens (1 - 5x)

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Macro_Cosmos
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Post by Macro_Cosmos »

mjkzz wrote:with extended holidays, finally got some time to do some work. But today a big BUG caught me, spent 2 hours debugging it, it turns out at 1:1 with Zhongyi Super Macro Mk II, magnification is NOT 1:1, it is 1.16:1, or 1.16x. I thought I had some bug in my software and it is "good" for others to be aware of it, instead of pulling your hair out :D :D

Here is a video about it
Interesting video! Mag. calibration is always useful. This information is pretty crucial too, 1.16x is pretty far off from 1x, I'd accept 1.02x but not 1.16x. I would not have thought to measure the mag. of such lenses and simply believe the manufacturer's claim.

Always be sceptical I'd say.

mjkzz
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Post by mjkzz »

Macro_Cosmos wrote:
mjkzz wrote:with extended holidays, finally got some time to do some work. But today a big BUG caught me, spent 2 hours debugging it, it turns out at 1:1 with Zhongyi Super Macro Mk II, magnification is NOT 1:1, it is 1.16:1, or 1.16x. I thought I had some bug in my software and it is "good" for others to be aware of it, instead of pulling your hair out :D :D

Here is a video about it
Interesting video! Mag. calibration is always useful. This information is pretty crucial too, 1.16x is pretty far off from 1x, I'd accept 1.02x but not 1.16x. I would not have thought to measure the mag. of such lenses and simply believe the manufacturer's claim.

Always be sceptical I'd say.
Thanks.

Yeah, I was pulling my hair out, I kept saying my computation can not be this inaccurate, on the contrary, it should be pretty good . . . after hours of struggle, I decided to measure magnification manually, it turns out my computation is right on.

Shot with Sony A7 III and Zhongyi Super Macro set at 1:1, I made sure the lens did not slide down.

Maybe somebody else can verify this, as mine is close to "enginerring" copy.
Image

RobertOToole
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Post by RobertOToole »

Macro_Cosmos wrote:
mjkzz wrote:with extended holidays, finally got some time to do some work. But today a big BUG caught me, spent 2 hours debugging it, it turns out at 1:1 with Zhongyi Super Macro Mk II, magnification is NOT 1:1, it is 1.16:1, or 1.16x. I thought I had some bug in my software and it is "good" for others to be aware of it, instead of pulling your hair out :D :D

Here is a video about it
Interesting video! Mag. calibration is always useful. This information is pretty crucial too, 1.16x is pretty far off from 1x, I'd accept 1.02x but not 1.16x. I would not have thought to measure the mag. of such lenses and simply believe the manufacturer's claim.

Always be sceptical I'd say.

Hi Guys,

Well I have some bad news for you guys, when I ran that 1x test earlier this year, for Ref: https://www.closeuphotography.com/1x-test-2020

I think the only lens that was actually at 1x was the Printing Nikkor and that is only because I set the extension to focus at 1x. The rest of the lenses were almost all away from 1x, some like the Sigma was something like 1.05 or 1.1x. In fact I tested something like 5 sigma macros for that test, each model was a different ratio.

Maybe its something that is designed into the lens for expansion for shooting in hot and humid, and frigid conditions?

When is 200mm ever 200mm, more like 190mm, or f/2.8 ever f/2.8, more like f/3.5 or f/3.8, and 1x is rarely ever 1x in my experience.

Best,

Robert

Macro_Cosmos
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Post by Macro_Cosmos »

mjkzz wrote: Maybe somebody else can verify this, as mine is close to "enginerring" copy.
Image
Hmmm, so it's 31mm horizontally, FF ~ 36mm. 36/31=1.16129x
That's certainly odd. Could be an engineering copy issue... or at least I would hope. If they didn't goof up the image quality on the first one and now the second one, I'd firmly believe it's just an engineering copy issue.

I'll ask someone I know with the "Ver. 2" lens, hopefully he's willing to snap a ruler pic.

mjkzz
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Post by mjkzz »

RobertOToole wrote:
Macro_Cosmos wrote:
mjkzz wrote:with extended holidays, finally got some time to do some work. But today a big BUG caught me, spent 2 hours debugging it, it turns out at 1:1 with Zhongyi Super Macro Mk II, magnification is NOT 1:1, it is 1.16:1, or 1.16x. I thought I had some bug in my software and it is "good" for others to be aware of it, instead of pulling your hair out :D :D

Here is a video about it
Interesting video! Mag. calibration is always useful. This information is pretty crucial too, 1.16x is pretty far off from 1x, I'd accept 1.02x but not 1.16x. I would not have thought to measure the mag. of such lenses and simply believe the manufacturer's claim.

Always be sceptical I'd say.

Hi Guys,

Well I have some bad news for you guys, when I ran that 1x test earlier this year, for Ref: https://www.closeuphotography.com/1x-test-2020

I think the only lens that was actually at 1x was the Printing Nikkor and that is only because I set the extension to focus at 1x. The rest of the lenses were almost all away from 1x, some like the Sigma was something like 1.05 or 1.1x. In fact I tested something like 5 sigma macros for that test, each model was a different ratio.

Maybe its something that is designed into the lens for expansion for shooting in hot and humid, and frigid conditions?

When is 200mm ever 200mm, more like 190mm, or f/2.8 ever f/2.8, more like f/3.5 or f/3.8, and 1x is rarely ever 1x in my experience.

Best,

Robert
It is not a bad news for me at all, I guess this is a "common" practice among lens makers. But just be aware of it, instead of 1x, it is 1.16x when doing come work that depends on it -- for example, when doing stack and stitch, the true magnification is needed to calculate overlap so that calculation will match reality.

Macro_Cosmos
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Post by Macro_Cosmos »

mjkzz wrote: It is not a bad news for me at all, I guess this is a "common" practice among lens makers. But just be aware of it, instead of 1x, it is 1.16x when doing come work that depends on it -- for example, when doing stack and stitch, the true magnification is needed to calculate overlap so that calculation will match reality.
My idea of utilising this lenses' telecentricity for inspection purposes is out of the window now I guess :roll: :roll:

Ultima_Gaina
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Post by Ultima_Gaina »

mjkzz wrote:
Macro_Cosmos wrote:
mjkzz wrote:with extended holidays, finally got some time to do some work. But today a big BUG caught me, spent 2 hours debugging it, it turns out at 1:1 with Zhongyi Super Macro Mk II, magnification is NOT 1:1, it is 1.16:1, or 1.16x. I thought I had some bug in my software and it is "good" for others to be aware of it, instead of pulling your hair out :D :D

Here is a video about it
Interesting video! Mag. calibration is always useful. This information is pretty crucial too, 1.16x is pretty far off from 1x, I'd accept 1.02x but not 1.16x. I would not have thought to measure the mag. of such lenses and simply believe the manufacturer's claim.

Always be sceptical I'd say.
Thanks.

Yeah, I was pulling my hair out, I kept saying my computation can not be this inaccurate, on the contrary, it should be pretty good . . . after hours of struggle, I decided to measure magnification manually, it turns out my computation is right on.

Shot with Sony A7 III and Zhongyi Super Macro set at 1:1, I made sure the lens did not slide down.

Maybe somebody else can verify this, as mine is close to "enginerring" copy.
Image
I checked mine on a FF camera, by (manually) focusing on a school ruler. Then I used the window ruler in PS to accurately measure the dimensions.

The magnification in my case is 1.06x, instead of 1:1:

Image

I also checked the other magnifications, by aligning the column (":") between the numbers with the mark on the lens:

2:1 is 2.03x
3:1 is 3.01x
4:1 is 3.96x
5:1 is 4.93x

mjkzz
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Post by mjkzz »

Ultima_Gaina wrote:
mjkzz wrote:
Macro_Cosmos wrote:
mjkzz wrote:with extended holidays, finally got some time to do some work. But today a big BUG caught me, spent 2 hours debugging it, it turns out at 1:1 with Zhongyi Super Macro Mk II, magnification is NOT 1:1, it is 1.16:1, or 1.16x. I thought I had some bug in my software and it is "good" for others to be aware of it, instead of pulling your hair out :D :D

Here is a video about it
Interesting video! Mag. calibration is always useful. This information is pretty crucial too, 1.16x is pretty far off from 1x, I'd accept 1.02x but not 1.16x. I would not have thought to measure the mag. of such lenses and simply believe the manufacturer's claim.

Always be sceptical I'd say.
Thanks.

Yeah, I was pulling my hair out, I kept saying my computation can not be this inaccurate, on the contrary, it should be pretty good . . . after hours of struggle, I decided to measure magnification manually, it turns out my computation is right on.

Shot with Sony A7 III and Zhongyi Super Macro set at 1:1, I made sure the lens did not slide down.

Maybe somebody else can verify this, as mine is close to "enginerring" copy.
Image
I checked mine on a FF camera, by (manually) focusing on a school ruler. Then I used the window ruler in PS to accurately measure the dimensions.

The magnification in my case is 1.06x, instead of 1:1:

Image

I also checked the other magnifications, by aligning the column (":") between the numbers with the mark on the lens:

2:1 is 2.03x
3:1 is 3.01x
4:1 is 3.96x
5:1 is 4.93x
This is great, it also saves me from more testing as it would be useless to test something that is SO different from public version.

Ultima_Gaina
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Post by Ultima_Gaina »

mjkzz wrote:
This is great, it also saves me from more testing as it would be useless to test something that is SO different from public version.
One observation: the above photo was made with Canon 5D mk3 and, in my calculations, I used 35mm for the sensor size.
However, I later noticed that, the sensor width is said to be 36mm, not 35mm, as I assumed..
If that's the case, the above magnifications must be proportionally adjusted (1.06x becomes 1.09x)

dhmiller
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Post by dhmiller »

Taking this back to the top, it appears that the modified Mitakon Creator 85mm f/2.8 1-5X Super Macro is not yet shipping. Has there been any announcement about when it is expected? In the meantime, does anyone know of another lens that covers the 1x - 2.5x range? Thanks for any info.

Ultima_Gaina
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Post by Ultima_Gaina »

dhmiller wrote:Taking this back to the top, it appears that the modified Mitakon Creator 85mm f/2.8 1-5X Super Macro is not yet shipping. Has there been any announcement about when it is expected? In the meantime, does anyone know of another lens that covers the 1x - 2.5x range? Thanks for any info.
I got mine shipped straight from the vendor. I can see that they have it in stock:
https://zyoptics.net/product/mitakon-cr ... per-macro/

dhmiller
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Post by dhmiller »

Have you had a chance to shoot with it/ Would you post some pix when you have time? And if you know where I can find the story about what was modified, could you point me to a link? Thanks very much.

Ultima_Gaina
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Post by Ultima_Gaina »

dhmiller wrote:Have you had a chance to shoot with it/ Would you post some pix when you have time? And if you know where I can find the story about what was modified, could you point me to a link? Thanks very much.
I didn't shoot much with it, except for the test posted above on Feb 15.

It looks like the front element shrunk, but I don't have the details of the technical changes.

dhmiller
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Post by dhmiller »

K- didn't know that shot was from the new version (didn't read carefully). Surprised that B/H doesn't have it yet ands reports only that it is coming.
Thanks much.

dickb
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Post by dickb »

dhmiller wrote:Have you had a chance to shoot with it/ Would you post some pix when you have time? And if you know where I can find the story about what was modified, could you point me to a link? Thanks very much.
According to Micael Widell it is optically not as poor as the first version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx4tiNrw16g

but it still suffers from basic problems such as a lack of internal flocking. I can't tell you what the exact changes are though.

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