Macro Photograph of a Clover

Testing a new lens for macrophotography

This was a test of a special type of lens for macrophotography. See below for some details on the lens.

Shot with the Sony a1 camera and a Nikon 8000 scanner lens. (Lens was surpluses from a dead scanner, and mounted to the Sony camera.)

I’m extremely pleased not just with the detail that lens provides (it’s top notch), but also with the colors. They are rich and natural, something I only see with the very very best lenses in the 35mm format. This lens is a real treasure.

Note: I didn’t realize that clover heads quickly droop. I had to do massive hand corrections to deal with that when I combined multiple shots, as one must do for most macro work. I didn’t quite catch all of the misalignments, but the image nonetheless serves well as proof of concept.

A few quick details on the lens:

• It performs, to my eye, as well as most very high end (and very expensive) macro lenses. One can pay into low five figures for the top macro lenses, used in various industrial and specialized situations. This one was just a couple hundred dollars. I am sure this is because its heritage is so…minimalist. It was torn out of a Nikon 8000 scanner, after all. But it turns out that scanning at high resolution demands an awfully good lens, and that is why it is so sharp and colorful.

• I did have to build an adapter from scratch to mount the lens on my Sony. It comes as a simple cylinder; I had to use shims to fit the lens base into a threaded tube, and from there I could then add the bits I needed to attach it to the camera. I will likely rebuild the attachment bits once I have some experience to make it more solid and adjustable for different amounts of magnification.

• The lens looks to be capable of much higher magnification. I’m reasonably sure I’ve finally found the right setup for my macro work…

Once I have it settled into a configuration that I like, I would hope I can do a write-up on the whole thing. It’s pretty solid, and worth sharing if anyone wants to build a first-rate macro photography setup.