[matthew]

It's a nothing photo, but it's an interesting story:



And here's the interesting part:



From top to bottom, what you're seeing is my Panasonic GH1 with an Olympus FL50 flash attached, on top of a Voigtländer m4/3 to F adapter, Sigma 1.4 telconverter, full set (68mm) of Kenko extension tubes, and a Sigma 180/3.5 Macro lens. The whole assembly is supported on a simple tripod and ballhead - my geared head with twin focusing rails being elsewhere at the moment - and I'm using a Gorillatorch to put enough light on the subject to let me focus. The subject itself is a tray of sand from the local beach.

A couple more photos:





These two shots are details from a Canadian 5-cent piece. By my ruler, the '2007' on the coin is less than 7mm across, making the total magnification about 2.75x 'life sized'. And while I can use the exact same lens assembly with my D700, its larger sensor means that it would be photographing double the linear dimensions for four times the surface area, and one-quarter the pixel count if I tried to match this by cropping. Sometimes having a smaller sensor is a significant advantage.

Except for the setup photo, all of these images are uncropped. The last two photos have been converted to monochrome (and then tinted) because it was faster and better than trying to deal with the chromatic aberrations that the 180/3.5 put on all of the specular highlights. The sand was shot at f/11, the other two at f/5.6.

[Don Schaeffer]

Very impressive set-up and results!

[Zig]

...nice beaver shot...:|
...and absolutely fascinating to see glass put to the max like this; splendid stuff.

[Toad]

Very interesting post. Its also interesting to see a case made for a smaller sensor that is not just based on camera size.

[nia]

WOW! I'm speechless dear Matthew This was very interesting and amazing work. But for me too complicated too The results are great, thank you,

with my love,
nia

[matthew]

Don, I have to admit that I thought of you when I was setting this up. (I may have looked at a couple of microscopes at one point.)

Zig, thanks; I have a couple of other parts of the process to work out - my better tripod, and getting the GH1 to work with my focus-stacking program - but I'm quite satisfied the results so far. It's too bad that the only macro m4/3 lens is a bit of a disappointment...

Toad, it's true - everything has its strengths.

[nia]

Don, I have to admit that I thought of you when I was setting this up. (I may have looked at a couple of microscopes at one point.)

Zig, thanks; I have a couple of other parts of the process to work out - my better tripod, and getting the GH1 to work with my focus-stacking program - but I'm quite satisfied the results so far. It's too bad that the only macro m4/3 lens is a bit of a disappointment...

Toad, it's true - everything has its strengths.

You are welcome Matthew, I'm reading and learning too

Thank you,
with my love,
nia

[Irma]

I am sorry if I don't give a proper comment on this, Matthew, but I have tried to read about m4/3 system and telling the truth I don't understand much what this is and why is so important nowadays.

I am happy however, that you worked with your camera and you got really impressive macros. I admire very much all details and sharpness.