R - Macro

[gbealnz]

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Yes Wilson, it's as I suspected, and similar here with parcels both in and out. They blame it on the current situation, but it has little to do with it. Not much I/we can do about it though.

Gary

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[wlaidlaw]

I have just received the Leica/Novoflex 16880/BR-2 macro bellows from the Italian seller. I suspect it is new old stock as it never seems to have been used and the manual had not been removed from its acetate sleeve. I have given it a trial run with my SL601 and an R to L adapter. The bellows is beautifully made and works very well with its separate extension and focusing racks, both of which are very smooth and have a locking knob on the opposite side to the variation knob. It comes with the slide copying bellows and some other rings, where I will have to look at the manual to ascertain their use. I am using it with a Novoflex Noflexar 60mm/2.8 auto-diaphragm R mount bellows lens, which not unexpectedly, works extremely well with the Novoflex made bellows (almost as if it was designed for it 😀). The DOF is very shallow. I thought that f5.6 would have all the movement in focus but you can see that is not the case. 

The photo is of a 1930's full hunter solid gold evening dress pocket watch, with a Jaeger le Coultre Calibre 479 16 jewel movement. This was sold to me by Brian Barnes the watchmaker in Lewes, not long before he died. I had used him for watch servicing for over 30 years. He was an interesting character, who had done the full 7 year apprenticeship with Jaeger le Coultre and spent his life working on expensive watches. Nevertheless, he was a wholly unrepentant Trotskyite, who when chief service technician of Rolex UK, had managed to stir the entire workforce up into a lengthy and bitter strike/dispute with management. We had had many interesting discussions over the years. I had taken in to Brian, an old dress pocket watch where a jewel had come out of the escapement, only to be told it was a cheap movement in a gold plated case, which was just not worth the cost of a repair. I asked him if he had any alternative he could sell me. He explained that he was selling up his stock as he was very ill and would be shutting down soon. He would only take £100 for the watch in the photo. When I had it valued for insurance some years after, it was valued at £1750, which is high for a non-Breguet pocket watch. I had not realised it had a Jaeger le Coultre movement and that the case was solid not rolled gold. 

Wilson

 

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Edited May 12, 2020 by wlaidlaw

[dritz]

On 4/20/2020 at 12:50 PM, AZN said:

The best lens to use with any of these 35mm slide-copy rigs is a 50 or 60mm macro. In this particular case it would be the Macro-Elmarit-R 60mm

I have a simpler set-up which I use with Sony AR7II - for that I use the Nikon ES-1 and Micro-NIkkor 60mm.  Brilliant for digitising 35mm film shot with the Leica Ms or R 😃

 

I think the lenses cannot have the ROM contacts. I use a 100 APO without ROM on my bellows.

[wlaidlaw]

If you want to use a lens with ROM contacts, the 16880/BR-2 Bellows is the only answer. This is the bellows shown in my post #102 above. I have been trying to copy slides with this bellows and using rubber bands to hold the slides in place but it is rather clunky, so I have the alternative slide holder device (CASTEL-COP-DIGI) on the way from Speed Graphic, the UK Novoflex agent. This has the same 35mm spacing of the rack legs as the secondary bellows attachment on the 16880/BR-2 and it is a matter of seconds to change over. 

Wilson

PS It has been suggested on another forum that the 60mm/f4 modern Noflexar macro/bellows lens I am using is actually a rebadged Schneider-Kreuznach Linos 60/4 reprographics/industrial lens. This would make sense as given the low volume of sales of this specialist lens, I would be surprised if Novoflex still made their own lenses, as they did in the past. Anyone visited Novoflex recently to see what they get up to? Many years ago some of Novoflex's lenses were made by Staeble, which was a subsidiary of Agfa but they disappeared some years ago. 

 

 

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Edited May 16, 2020 by wlaidlaw

[wlaidlaw]

Here is my final R lens set up for slide digitisation, using the 16880/BR-2 bellows, a Novoflex CASTEL-COP-DIGI  slide holder/spacer, an R mount Noflexar 60mm macro lens, an R to L adapter and SL601 camera. Obviously this set up would also work for any R camera, R8 and 9 included. With the spacing as shown, I get a perfect full frame image of the film part of the mounted slide. As I have a lot of mount bar available to move the slide holder further away from the lens , this would also work with longer focal length lenses such as my 100 APO Macro, if New Zealand Post ever get off their backsides and send it to me. It is now a few days short of 2 months of the lens sitting in Auckland Airport with no movement, in spite of daily flights to Hong Kong and Los Angeles, from where direct flights to London are available. 

Wilson

 

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[ramarren]

Nice setup! 

I lucked into a practically new Leica Focusing Bellows-R with included short-mount Elmar-R 100mm f/4 some years back. This setup permits from infinity to 1:1 magnification as delivered, with its built-in focusing rail it does a great job with any of my Leicaflex SL, R6.2, SL, or CL bodies. (Of course, with the CL body fitted, to copy 35mm format slides requires approximately 1:1.5 magnification rather than 1:1.) I normally scan/copy film using a Novoflex Magic copy stand system.

But with a 100mm lens, this places the heavy camera/bellows/lens setup rather high on the copy stand with a 1:1 capture, which means it is more likely to suffer from image degradation due to movement. APS-C's lower magnification requirement reduces this somewhat, but the better setup for this work, for me, is the CL fitted with Leica Macro Adapter-R, Macro-Elmarit-R 60mm and mounted on a Novoflex Focusing Rail on the Magic copy stand. This package is much lighter, allows the precision focusing I want, and can be used with the Novoflex CASTEL-COP-DIGI  slide holder/spacer as well if desired. (I haven't bought one yet, I use a spacer and guide taped to the flat panel light box to register the original's position and just orient the copystand/camera assembly so that it is directed exactly 90 degrees to the center of the original.) Vibration is minimized and I net the same 24 Mpixel capture as I used to with the SL this way. I release the shutter with the Leica FOTOs app on my iPhone, again to reduce/minimize vibration of the camera setup. 

The Focusing Bellows-R proves very handy and versatile, however, expanding the range of use for my Leica R lenses ... I can use from 50 to 180 mm lenses with it, and it has a rotating scale bar with magnifications for 90, 100, and 135 lenses as well as a millimeter extension scale. The lens mount includes click-stopped 90° rotation for horizontal or vertical orientation (handy when copying 645 negs) and, if using the appropriate double cable release with the R system bodies, semi-automatic auto-aperture operation as well. The focusing rail allows about 60mm of fore/aft movement, total, and the bellows extension knob works together with a lever/button on the lens mount to allow the aperture to be opened and closed easily, in case you're not using the dual cable release. 

It's a great bellows/lens system. I bought it for something like $400 complete, in the box, about a half a dozen years ago.

G

[msh58]

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vor 4 Stunden schrieb ramarren:

Nice setup! 

I lucked into a practically new Leica Focusing Bellows-R with included short-mount Elmar-R 100mm f/4 some years back. This setup permits from infinity to 1:1 magnification as delivered, with its built-in focusing rail it does a great job with any of my Leicaflex SL, R6.2, SL, or CL bodies. (Of course, with the CL body fitted, to copy 35mm format slides requires approximately 1:1.5 magnification rather than 1:1.) I normally scan/copy film using a Novoflex Magic copy stand system.

But with a 100mm lens, this places the heavy camera/bellows/lens setup rather high on the copy stand with a 1:1 capture, which means it is more likely to suffer from image degradation due to movement.

Hello! Stability is not an issue, if you use the big Reprovit IIa (16 788) stand with a universal camera holder (16 798), which replaces the normal Focoslide reproduction head. The camera holder has a groove which matches both the 16 860 R bellows and the M Bellows II (16 556) The camera shown in pictures is the SL with R-Adapter L. The camera holder can actually accommodate practically any camera easily. The lights of Reprovit IIa (not pictured) are quite good with modern LED bulbs. - Matti

 

[tobiasfjp]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but for those looking for this info I thought I'd add; this is how the BR2 Bellows were intended to be used, with the Macro-Elmar 100/4 (11270, only 250 ever made I believe) allowing focus from infinity down to 1.1:1. A very lovely setup.

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[GregNski]

Does anyone know if the APO-MACRO-ELMARIT-R will work with bellows? I read somewhere that the rear elements do not move when focusing, and I was wondering what effect that would have using the bellows.

[dkCambridgeshire]

20 minutes ago, GregNski said:

Does anyone know if the APO-MACRO-ELMARIT-R will work with bellows? I read somewhere that the rear elements do not move when focusing, and I was wondering what effect that would have using the bellows.

IIRC, Leica do not 'recommend' using the 100/2.8 APO with bellows or tubes because the lens is allegedly designed to be used with rear element at its fixed optimum distance from the image plane. However, I have seen pix taken using the lens on a bellows and they looked fine. Possibility Leica Camera was hoping users would buy the dedicated front of lens mounted 1.1:1 ELPRO accessory?  I use my R 100/ 2.8 APO with the R 2x APO Extender which works fine. And I tend to disregard Leica Camera 'recommendations' from years ago. If something 'works' then no reason not to use it. 

The BR2 bellows is very likely a modified Novoflex accessory, i.e., with Leica R mounts. Likely possible to 'make your own' by modifying an existing Novoflex  bellows. Novoflex likely list the required mounts. 

Edited December 12, 2024 by dkCambridgeshire

[tobiasfjp]

No doubt about it!

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[wlaidlaw]

An excellent lens to use with the BR2 and an SL601 and R to L adapter, is the 60mm/f4 Noflexar macro lens in R mount. These can be found dirt cheap on Fleabay. This lens has no focussing helicoid so has to be used on a bellows. R mount seems the commonest variant. I have then used the Novoflex CASTEL-COP-Digi slide copying device with my BR-2/16880 bellows. See post above on this page #105 for pic. The 100/2.8 Macro Elmarit is a bit of a handful on the BR-2 Bellows and although it does sort of work, it would not be my chosen combo. 

Wilson