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Nikkor 200mm f5.6 C medical

Has anyone here used this lens? It looks fun and interesting! Comes ready to shoot 3:1 and has a ring light built in with automatic TTL. Seen a used setup foing for $400 on KEH.com

It would seem to be a fun setup for focus stacking on a rail or backyard bug hunting. Moving forward and back to focus is how I usually shoot bugs anyways so the inability to focus would be just fine.

I'm looking for some examples taken with this setup.

http://www.mir.com.my/michaeliu/cameras/shared/ff2macro/medicalnikkor.htm

http://www.cameraquest.com/nf200med.htm
 

StuartRae

New member
Hi Jake,

It would seem to be a fun setup for focus stacking on a rail.........

I used to use Helicon Focus for focus stacking. Unless you know otherwise, my experience is as follows.

Having got fed up with trying to make small adjustments of the focus ring I made a simple stage for the object, driven by a 10mm bolt. The initial focusing at the closest point was made using a sheet of paper with a black cross drawn on it which was placed against the object and focused using AF. Focus was then changed to MF, and by turning the bolt one revolution at a time (1.5mm) I was able to take about 16 shots of an object with a depth of 1 inch. Unfortunately Helicon was unable to cope with the change in image size, which although very small between individual shots was quite large between nearest and furthest.

Regards,

Stuart
 
Hi Jake,



I used to use Helicon Focus for focus stacking. Unless you know otherwise, my experience is as follows.

Having got fed up with trying to make small adjustments of the focus ring I made a simple stage for the object, driven by a 10mm bolt. The initial focusing at the closest point was made using a sheet of paper with a black cross drawn on it which was placed against the object and focused using AF. Focus was then changed to MF, and by turning the bolt one revolution at a time (1.5mm) I was able to take about 16 shots of an object with a depth of 1 inch. Unfortunately Helicon was unable to cope with the change in image size, which although very small between individual shots was quite large between nearest and furthest.

Regards,

Stuart


I haven't got myself a rail or set anything up yet. Thanks for the advice.

What interests me about this lens is that, from what I've read, it resist diffraction much more than other lens and stops down to f45. Possibly beating out the MP-E at F16. But this is just from reading though.
 
I haven't got myself a rail or set anything up yet. Thanks for the advice.

What interests me about this lens is that, from what I've read, it resist diffraction much more than other lens and stops down to f45. Possibly beating out the MP-E at F16. But this is just from reading though.

Hi Jake,

Diffraction is the same for any lens at a given aperture number, it's physics and only the aperture number and the wavelength of light play a role. That's why focus stacking is popular with these scenarios where DOF is almost non-existent anyway. One can choose the aperture number where the optimum balance between lens aberrations and diffraction delivers the highest resolution. Shoot too wide open and residual lens aberrations will reduce quality, shoot too narrow and diffraction will kill microdetail.

When shooting really close, magnification factors of more than 1:1, then focus-stacking becomes important (if one wants to record anything in focus that has more depth than a millimetre).

Two methods are used. One uses the focusing ring or lets the focus be done by software while shooting tethered. The other uses a focus rail to either step the camera's focus plane through the depth of the subject, or step the subject through the fixed camera's focus plane. The stitching software will (amongst others) adjust for the size differences that occur when focusing at different depths in the subject.

Cheers,
Bart
 
Unfortunately Helicon was unable to cope with the change in image size, which although very small between individual shots was quite large between nearest and furthest.

Hi Stuart,

That may be related to either the number of images in the stack, or the amount of DOF overlap. Also, there are shooting scenarios which cause more difficulties for the automatic masking. Especially occlusions can cause trouble (foreground feature overlapping the background features). Helicon Focus did add a third method (pyramid) recently, so maybe that could help, if you kept the the focus brackets instead of tossing them away.

Cheers,
Bart
 
Hi Jake,

Diffraction is the same for any lens at a given aperture number, it's physics and only the aperture number and the wavelength of light play a role. That's why focus stacking is popular with these scenarios where DOF is almost non-existent anyway. One can choose the aperture number where the optimum balance between lens aberrations and diffraction delivers the highest resolution. Shoot too wide open and residual lens aberrations will reduce quality, shoot too narrow and diffraction will kill microdetail.

When shooting really close, magnification factors of more than 1:1, then focus-stacking becomes important (if one wants to record anything in focus that has more depth than a millimetre).

Two methods are used. One uses the focusing ring or lets the focus be done by software while shooting tethered. The other uses a focus rail to either step the camera's focus plane through the depth of the subject, or step the subject through the fixed camera's focus plane. The stitching software will (amongst others) adjust for the size differences that occur when focusing at different depths in the subject.

Cheers,
Bart

Thanks Bart.

Yes I had already know or understood what you wrote but I am really wondering if anyone has actually used this medical-nikkor 200mm f5.6 C.

Or should I just forget about it and grab some tubes for the tokina 100mm f2.8 macro.
 
Jake

My first knowledge about the lens came from this thread some weeks after your initial entry. I was intrigued, read all I could find about the lens, and found it still for sale on the KEH camera site with a price reduction and free shipping. Compared to e-bay and offerings from other stores, the price was very reasonable. So now I have it and am awaiting a Manfrotto 454 Micromimetric Positioning Plate and an AS-15 adaptor for ring flash control.

It's a lovely outfit in great condition. I've used it hand held and outside so far, and had a lot of fun. With no focussing ring, you have to move the camera closer to or further from the target to obtain focus. Getting good handheld focus is not easy with a 3:1 image size to object size ratio, although it's not difficult with 1:1 or lower ratios. However, I got some good in-focus images that were sharp and brought out minute detail even at 3:1, albeit with a goodly number of discards. I anticipate that tripod use with the positioning plate plus focus stacking will bring out the best of the lens. The current absence of the AS-15 has delayed use of the ring flash.

Many thanks for bringing this lens to my attention. I'll post some images when the positioning plate and adaptor arrive, and after I've practiced focus stacking, which is a new technique for me. From what I've read, CS5 handles it fairly well, so I'll start with that.

Cheers
Mike
 
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