Below is the latest addition
to my Olympus OM outfit, bought without any prior planning or budgetting,
purely on impulse. I had gone into a shop where a Zuiko 35-70 f4 AF had been
on sale for several weeks, thinking that such a lens would be quite fun to
use on my OM-40. Using its Program mode, it could have made an interesting
"point and shoot" SLR. I asked to try it on the only OM body that
they had and discovered that the lens mount had some fault that prevented
it from locating properly on the body. While the salesman was examining the
lens, I found myself holding a near mint black OM-2n every bit as good as
the original chrome one that I'd bought from new.
I didn't buy the lens but I had an attack of "'Lympus
Lust" and just couldn't resist buying the body!
Probably more than any other brand of SLR cameras, Olympus have produced a wide range of macro lenses and equipment and there is a tendency among OM System owners to decry the use of normal close-up gear as used with other camera systems, but for owners who do not feel the need, or have the funds, to spend the the sort of money required to equip themselves with macro lenses, the following inexpensive equipment, when used in conjunction with conventional lenses, can produce excellent close-up photographs. Most of these items come from third party ("aftermarket") suppliers.
In all cases ensure that your taking lens is stopped down to around f11 - you would need to anyway in order to obtain reasonable depth-of-field at close working distances.
Lens coupling ring. This has the appearance of two filter mounts glued together and enables two lenses to be joined together nose to nose. Optimally these should be a 135mm telephoto lens and a 50mm standard lens, where the 135 is fitted to the camera body and the 50 serves as a high quality supplementary lens to it. This combination performs as a low-power microscope and has the advantage that the auto diaphragm of the 135 can still be used. The diaphragm of the 50 is left fully open. Take care that the rear element of the 50mm is not scratched by its close proximity to the subject.
Supplementary lenses,
sometimes oddly called "close-up filters," are simple meniscus lenses that
are screwed into the front of your camera lens and a become, in effect, reading
glasses - or rather, a reading monocle - for your lens. They are available
in various strengths, which are measured in dioptres* - the larger
the number the nearer you can focus.
Many photographers will tell you that the use of these lenses will degrade
your image, but this advice generally comes from people who haven't used them
themselves but are simply passing on a myth. A criticism often levelled against
them is that they magnify any aberrations already present in the taking lens,
and this may well be true, especially of a complex, specialised lens, but
by the time the lens is stopped down to f11 (as recommended), these aberrations
have effectively disappeared. Some expensive close-up lenses have more than
one element, but these are for use at wide apertures and are an unnecessary
expense for when the lens is used stopped down.
Supplementary lenses supplied by camera manufacturers have been extensively
employed on many cameras famous for their quality lenses - Rolleiflex, Zeiss
Contaflex, Kodak Retinas and Retina Reflex, Voigtländer Bessamatic, etc.
Two particular advantages of them are that an auto diaphragm is unaffected
and that there is no loss of light.
Split-field Close Up Lens. This appears to be a normal +2 dioptre supplementary that has been 'cut' into two (but you only get one half) and cemented into a rotating filter mount. This allows half of your picture to be focused at infinity and the other half at about 20 inches, and this is a way of emulating larger format cameras that use movements to spread apparent depth of field. If you buy one of these lenses, before you use it, paint matt black the 'cut' edge if it is hasn't been blackened, or each use of it will be accompanied by a light streak across your picture. Use at f8 or smaller for the best results.
Extension tubes. These are usually bought in sets of three different sizes which may, if required, be joined together in any combination. Additionally, there is a choice of between auto and manual types, the former allowing the transmission of the auto iris operation to the lens, while the latter keeps the lens stopped down to the selected aperture at all times. Olympus alone offer their tubes singly but I have not experienced any of those to ascertain whether their very much higher prices are justified. The purpose of extension tubes is to supplement the focusing movement of a lens to enable it to focus at a much closer distance than that for which it was designed. Their disadvantages are that they are somewhat fiddly to use, and the need for increased exposure, although the latter is automatically taken care of with any cameras of the OM range, even with flash when used with one the TTL OTF equipped models and a T flashgun.
Extension bellows. These do the same
job as manual extension tubes, but smoothly and continuously over a much wider
focusing range. Olympus bellows units employ a double cable release to close
down the iris diaphragm at the point of exposure but even secondhand they
are usually too expensive to come under the budget label, but thanks to a
lucky eBay auction 'win,' I now have a set of these with double cable release
at a reasonable cost.
I have owned since new a BPM Bellowscope which I originally bought for use
with my Pen FT. Made by Butterfield Photographic Manufacturing, who sadly
are no longer in business, it uses interchangeable lens and body mounts so
that you could change your make of SLR camera, buy new mounts and keep your
bellows. You could send a lens, however strange the fitting to Butterfield,
and they would make you a suitable mount at a reasonable charge, which meant
that you could use a wide variety of lenses on your SLR via your bellows.
For example, I have lens mounts for a 39 mm enlarging lens, a microscope objective,
a 135 mm Tessar from a plate camera and, of course, an OM Zuiko lens. The
two standards which hold the lens and body mounts are individually threaded
and two screws holding the bellows unit together can be removed allowing conversion,
using two ball and socket heads on a straight flash bracket, to a sort of
monorail camera, permitting swings, tilts and rise and fall movements that
are restricted only by the internal diameter of the bellows. I have seen these
bellows with mounts for sale second hand at an eighth of the price of an Olympus
bellows, and I think that SRB in Luton (see Links page) make some of
the simpler, screw type only, mounts for them.
Also available from BPM at the time was the Reprotran slide copying attachment
and the bellows hood made for for it, and focusing rails, which fit very neatly
under the bellowscope or used on their own, on a copying stand for instance.
Reversing Rings.
These connect the filter ring of your lens to the camera body so that the
lens is mounted backwards.
The theory behind this arrangement is that lenses are designed to be close
to the film surface yet very much further from the subject, but if, when used
for macrophotography, the lens is closer to the subject than it is to the
film, better performance will result if the lens is turned around. Used in
this fashion, there is no link between the automatic iris mechanisms of lens
and body so it is necessary to either:
Note that a wide-angle lens will magnify considerably more than a standard lens when reversed in this way. I have heard recommendations that the 35 - 70mm f3.5 - f4.5 Zuiko mini zoom is particularly effective when used like this though I have yet to try it. Extension tubes or bellows can be interposed between body and reversing ring for higher magnifications. I have seen only 49mm and 55mm filter thread models available in OM reversing rings - none of which are produced by Olympus.
*Dioptres are based on metres - a +1 supplementary lens will allow your camera lens set at infinity to focus on a subject 1 metre away; a +3 lens to 13 inches (1/3rd metre) and so on. If you have a supplementary lens that is unmarked with its strength, just focus the sun with it onto a piece of paper and measure (or estimate) the distance from the glass to the paper and divide this distance into a metre. If, for example, the distance is half a metre, then you have a +2 dioptre lens.
My Mobile Close-up Kit for macro photography in woodland, sometimes at ground level is:
xxx
Links to other pages:
PICTURE GALLERY
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This is the well revered Yoshihisa Maitani, the prime originator of the the Olympus OM System - indeed the 'M' is understood to stand for Maitani and the System was originally launched with the 'M-1' camera until E Leitz GmbH complained. M-1 was already in use as their designation for a 'blind' Leica camera and to avoid confusion Olympus agreed to rename theirs the now famous 'OM-1.'
That Mr Maitani was an admirer of Leica rangefinder cameras is both well known and clear from his own camera designs. Indeed, the OM-1 has much more in common with them than Leitz's own ugly, wedge-shaped first SLR, the Leicaflex.
He rose to be the Managing Director of Olympus Optical and has now retired, but this picture shows him when he was the young Chief Designer. This particular illustration was used by Olympus USA to advertise the OM flash system and it was scanned and 'stitched' from a double page spread in an issue from around 1983 of the now sadly defunct US magazine Modern Photography.