Sony Alpha 700 Macrophotography – II: Cheap D.O. Industries 135mm f/4.5 on Spiratone Bellowscope

Anyone ever hear of D.O. Industries? I had never come across any lenses from them until I suddenly ran into this little beauty on EBay, going really cheap. It seemed to be an enlarger lens, but it had what appeared to be a T-mount type threaded mount. A quick email ( an even quicker response from the seller) confirmed that the diameter of the threaded end was indeed 42mm, so I took a chance on it and picked it up, since I was looking for a 135mm lens that would fit on my Spiratone Bellowscope.

I already have a nice Spiratone 150mm f/4.5 bellows lens, but I’m the curious type, and more than that, the name of the 135mm lens intrigued me. The lens itself is small, and solidly built – probably 4 element (maybe 6). Not sure if it is coated. The body looks old and appears to have seen much use, and the paint has faded, but nice glass. It was probably a workhorse lens on someone’s enlarger for many years. It even came with the retaining ring, which is rare these days.

I did a little bit of research on D.O. Industries, and here’s what I came up. Apparently they were an importer and distributor for Fujinon lenses, and they also sold lenses under their own name (rumor has it that D.O lenses are made by Fuji. The optical quality certainly seems to bear that out).

D.O. Industries was started by a gentleman by name David Goldstein in 1972. The company is still around. They are now called Navitar, and you can read their timeline here. I’m glad they’re still around. They seem to be doing well in the current digital era with new imaging products. Innovate, Evolve or Die, right? The photography marketplace is pretty ruthless, with old-timer companies closing down almost every day.

In case no one’s noticed, practically every 3rd party lens company had names ending with –AR. It seems to have been vogue with photographic companies back in the day. You see products with names such as Vivitar, Albinar, Astranar, Rokunar, Lentar, Kitstar, Macrotar and so on. I’ve often wondered why.

When I tried to fit the lens to a T-mount, I noticed that the thread, while being very close, was just not right. It seemed to be more like 41mm, but the pitch was OK. I got around this by wrapping a piece of light cotton sewing thread on the lens thread, and it works just fine. Curious. As long as it works, I am happy.

The advantage of using a longer focal length lens on the bellows is that it permits a longer “stand-off” distance. A short focal length lens (35mm, 40mm or 50mm) can give greater magnification, but the focusing distance is very short, which means that the light is cut off drastically, and one has to use supplemental lighting. The longer focal length bellows lenses (75mm, 135mm and 150mm) can focus from 18 inches to as far as 3 feet away, which lets a lot of ambient light get to the subject. Besides, there’s room for the tripod legs if the subject is 24 inches or more away.

Since I was trying out this lens indoors, I just used a pedestal lamp with the Sony’s WB setting to Tungsten lamp. I used a Auto ISO setting. The exposure was 1/5 to 1/8 second, and I was able to stop down to f/8 to increase the depth of field. If I were outdoors in natural sunlight, I would have used 100 ISO and a smaller aperture.

The tripod permits the longer exposure without shake. To avoid inadvertent camera shake during release, I used the Sony’s self timer setting (Drive Mode button, and then select self timer 10 seconds). This ensures that there is minimal shake. The Sony doesn’t have mirror lock-up, but it’s superbly damped. The mirror return ‘snap’ doesn’t seem to affect the image in any way.

For subjects, I used some of my wife’s traditional jewelry. Without more ado, here are the pictures

D.O. Industries 135mm f/4.5 on Alpha 700

D.O. Industries 135mm f/4.5 on Alpha 700

D.O. Industries 135mm f/4.5 on Alpha 700

D.O. Industries 135mm f/4.5 on Alpha 700

D.O. Industries 135mm f/4.5 on Alpha 700

D.O. Industries 135mm f/4.5 on Alpha 700

D.O. Industries 135mm f/4.5 on Alpha 700

D.O. Industries 135mm f/4.5 on Alpha 700

D.O. Industries 135mm f/4.5 on Alpha 700

D.O. Industries 135mm f/4.5 on Alpha 700

D.O. Industries 135mm f/4.5 on Alpha 700

D.O. Industries 135mm f/4.5 on Alpha 700

The Bellows mounts to my Sony Alpha 700 with a standard Minolta AF-T mount adapter, and the whole thing goes on a cheap Velbon tripod. Nothing special. Here’s the setup.

D.O. Industries 135mm f/4.5 on Alpha 700 Setup

D.O. Industries 135mm f/4.5 on Alpha 700 Setup

D.O. Industries 135mm f/4.5 on Alpha 700 Setup

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Photographed with a Sony Alpha 700 DSLR, D.O. Industries 135mm Emlarger lens (Fuji??) fitted on a Spiratone Bellowscope. Auto ISO with Tungsten light WB setting. Exposure was 1/5 second and 1/8 second at f/8 from a distance of about 24 inches. I used a Velbon Tripod.

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olympus/zuiko by Ajoy Muralidhar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
text and images © 2008 ajoy muralidhar. all names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners. thank you for visiting olympus/zuiko.

 

How to mount a manual focus lens on the Sony Alpha 700

Happy New Year! As the first post for 2008, I thought I’d write a brief note on mounting all those beautiful vintage manual lenses on the Sony α 700, especially my Zuiko prime lenses and the other OM mount 3rd party lenses I own. Most people know by now that all the Minolta AF and most 3rd party AF lenses made since 1985 can be used on the Sony Alpha series cameras without any problem (luckily for us, Sony retained the Minolta A mount).

What’s not as well known is the fact that all the great old vintage lenses out there can be used on the Sony Alpha series cameras as well. There are T-mounts or other adapters available to mount older manual focus lenses to the Sony Alpha 700 (and the Sony Alpha 100, of course.)

There are many wonderful manual focusing lenses available everywhere – often for a few dollars, since most folks don’t know (or care) about the 3rd Party MANUAL focus lenses from the 60’s and 70’s – Vivitar, Kiron, Panagor, Soligor, Spiratone all made or marketed lenses for practically every camera mount, so there are a lot of choices, Of course, with the proper mount, you can also mount Canon, Nikon or Pentax M42 or K mount lenses. Personally, I favor my beautiful OEM Zuiko lenses… since they were originally built light and small, with superb optics and perfect for mounting on todays Digital SLRs.

There is just one thing to remember – whenever a lens is mounted on any AF camera, the camera usually recognizes the lens via the contacts at the back of the AF lens. Once the “lens mount check” is done, the camera recognizes the lens and communicates with it, allowing the shutter to operate. However, the old manual lenses have no contacts and thus there is nothing for the camera to recognize, so the shutter will not operate.

However, most cameras have an option buried deep within the documentation that tells you how to turn off the “lens check”. The Minolta AF/Sony FAQ has instructions for most of the Minolta AF models, but it’s not specific when it comes to the A700.

Here’s how to enable shutter operation on the Sony A700 with a manual lens mounted. On the Alpha 700 Menu, go to the Custom Menu #2 (the little Gear icon) and scroll down until you find a function called “Release w/o Lens” and change the Default to ENABLE (the default is DISABLE). Once that’s done, you can mount any lens, AF or Manual and the camera will meter and the shutter will fire normally.

Simple, huh? Thanks again, Sony and Minolta! I love my old lenses, and appreciate the backwards compatibility that permits the use of 60’s and 70’s optics on a modern Digital SLR.

By the way, if someone is wondering how to mount Zuiko lenses on the Sony Alpha DSLR, its simple. Bower makes an adapter

for mounting OM Zuiko lenses to Minolta AF or Sony Alpha bodies. It has a glass element, so it can provide Infinity focus. Its generally available for about $65 or so on ebay – look for “Minolta Maxxum AF OM adapter”. Here is an example of what the Bower adapter can do using a Zuiko 200mm f/4. I’ll post some pictures with other Zuikos on my Alpha 700 soon.

Note on Zuiko lenses: The Zuiko wide-angle primes have a little projection at the back of the lens that does not allow them to mount on the Bower adapter. I tested the 28mm f/3.5 and 35mm f/2.8. Since I dont have the 24mm or wider lenses, I can’t tell. However, I can use them with a 12mm extension tube – there’s no infinity focus, but they’re great for close-up or macrophotography. Of course, for greater magnification, one can use a 24mm or 36mm extension tube, or a combination. All my other Zuiko prime and Zoom lenses did not have any mounting problems with the Bower adapter. I was able to mount a 50mm f/1.8; 50mm f/1.4; 100mm f/2.8; 30-70mm f/4, 200mm f/4. 135mm f/2.8, 135mm f/3.5, 75-150mm f/4, 100-200mm f5, 300mm f/4.5. I also tested some 3rd party OM mount lenses – the Panagor 90mm f/2.8, Tokina 70-210mm f/3.5 etc. I’ll have some pictures posted soon.

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text and images © 2008 ajoy muralidhar. all names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners. Thank you for visiting olympuszuiko.


This work by Ajoy Muralidhar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

 

Slow start to November

That’s because I’ve been busy with updating some of the other areas of the site that I meant to add to for a while now. I finally managed to finish the “Classics” section, and added the pictures of my older cameras – the solid Yashica TL Super (with Yashinon 50mm f/1.4), The Yashica Electro 35 GSN and the Yashica Dental Eye with its great big 50mm f/4 ring flash lens.

I also added pictures of the Fujica Fujicarex II and its peculiar interchangeable front elements. That was a lucky find, since I was able to get the 50mm f/4 element with the camera and the seller even had the 80mm f/2.8 and the 35mm f/3.5 front elements. I still need to add the pictures of the Yashikor screw-in lenses for the Electro 35.

In the Olympus camera section, I’ve added pictures of the Olympus PEN EE half frame camera. This is the early version camera – it says Olympus on the front and has the “leather” look leatherette instead of the “basketview” leatherette of the later models.

In the Non-Zuiko 3rd party lenses section, I’ve added pictures of the super telephoto Spiratone 400mm f/6.3 and the Toyo 5 Star 500mm f/8 long tube lenses, the Kitstar 200mm f/3.3 and the Vivitar 70-150mm f/3.8. I need to get some of the lens data in there as well for the Zuikos.

I still need to add pictures of the Vivitar 55mm f/2.8 and the Vivitar Series 1 28-90mm. The Zuiko section has some pictures added as well – the Zuiko 100-200mm f/5 and the Zuiko 100mm f/2.8. Yes, I finally got one. It wasn’t cheap as I would have liked, but it was a good price for a lens in fine condition. In the Minolta area, I have some pictures of the Maxxum 35-105mm lens.

The one area I haven’t gotten around to updating is the Macrophotography section – it looks so bare without any pictures of my equipment. I’ll be adding pictures of the Hoya 52mm screw-in macro lenses, the Vivitar extension tubes, and the Spiratone bellows assembly with the 35mm Macrotar, the 150mm Macrotel and the 75mm flatfield. These are dedicated Macro lenses. Of course, I still need to take some pictures of the Honeywell Repronar equipment. I managed to get the descriptions of all the Macro equipment done though.

Later this winter, when its too cold to do anything else, I’ll work on the Microphotography section and add pictures of my Wolf-Wetzlar and Propper Microscopes, the various Wetzlar, Vickers objectives, eyepieces and the microscope adapter stuff.

That will be a while, though. Fall beckons, clothed in her colorful leafy finery… her siren song fills a photographer’s soul with happiness. I need to be out there taking pictures.

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text and images © 2007 ajoy muralidhar. all names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners.

 

Cheap Super Telephoto Lenses Part III – Handholding a Toyo/Five Star 500mm f/8 lens

A while ago I had written about the advantages and shortcomings of cheap super-telephoto lenses and mirror lenses – while similar lenses are still being manufactured and available new for about $120 or so from Ebay, there are a lot more older super telephotos from the 70’s still available for between $30-$60 – these lenses are acceptably sharp, since they were designed for slide film. These old lenses are a veritable smorgasbord of alphabet soup, and range from OEM lenses to well known brands like Vivitar and Spiratone to one-person importer offerings like Jack Gershon’s Albinar and genuine lesser known lens manufacturers like Toyo.

Here are the related Posts:
Cheap Super Telephoto Lenses Part I
Cheap Super Telephoto Lenses Part II
Learning to love your Mirror Lens

I recently purchased a Toyo Five Star 500 non-mirror long tube refractive lens.. it was in mint condition, and priced reasonably so… anyway I was curious about the lens, and wanted to test it out and see how it stacked up against my Soligor C/D 500mm f/8 fixed aperture mirror. I also have a Spiratone 400mm f.6.3 Zuiko 300 f/4.5 and Vivitar 300mm f/5.6 from the same era, so I thought it would be interesting to compare them. I’ll write about that at some future point.

About the Toyo – they were an independent lens maker back in the late 60’ sand 70’s who marketed lenses under the Toyo, TOU/Five Star and TOYO Five Star brand names. There’s not much information about them, but you can find anything if you dig deep enough. The Toyo name is pretty common, and applied to several diverse industrial and consumer products including automotive tires, so sometimes you have to take educated guesses based on sparse company history.

I found a thread on photo.net suggesting that Toyo lenses were made by Toyoview, a division of Mamiya, but I don’t think that’s correct. Toyoview does make a variety of optical stuff for view cameras and are still around. However, I believe that all the Toyo lenses were made by Toyotec – they are a conglomerate with a optical lens division that has been producing lenses since 1967. Their optical lens division has changed names a couple of times in the mid-seventies, from Toyo Seiki Kogyo to Aichi Lens to Toyo Kogaku Kogyo. Their history can be found at Toyotec.com. Obviously, they are still in business, and apparently doing quite well in the digital world, manufacturing CCDs and lens elements along with a range of other services.

First impressions – the Toyo 500mm f/8 looks very similar to the Spiratone 400mm f/6.3, down to the lettering and markings, except for the fact that the 500mm is considerably smaller than the 400mm. The Spiratone 400mm’s f/6.3 aperture is gained by having a larger front element – the Spiratone takes 72mm filters while the Toyo Five Star 500mm takes 67mm filters, so that’s very good. By contrast, my Soligor 500mm C/D f/8 Mirror lens takes hard to find, expensive 77mm filters. Luckily, they guy I bought in from threw in a Skylight filter and a 77mm Rokunar Polarizer. Not the best, but hey, it was free. I prefer the 72mm filter size any day, since I can easily get step-down adapters to fit my other lenses if need be. I love the Soligor C/D mirror, but the filter prices are another story.

Overall, the Toyo Five Star 500mm f/8 lens is smaller and shorter than the Spiratone 400mm f/6.3. It’s all metal, and as was common at the time, it’s a T-mount preset lens. Focusing has to be done wide open, and manually stopped down by turning the ring below the aperture ring from O to C (Open – Close). The aperture settings run from f/8 through f/32. Now that’s a big advantage over the mirror lenses, but the mirrors are very compact by comparison and easily handheld. To handhold the Toyo lens, I’d need to have a shutter speed of at least 1/500 (rule of thumb 1/focal length, remember?)

Long super telephoto lenses 300mm and above generally come with an integral tripod mounting ring – that’s a good indication that they are hopeless to handhold. I don’t mind the slow speeds – I generally shoot at f/8-f/16, and being able to maintain a decent shutter speed for hand held photography is a challenge.

Sports photography applications generally call for fast lenses, since freezing action reliably in varying light conditions needs shutter speeds of 1/500 second and above, which means shooting wide open since a shallow depth of field is acceptable. If you’re into landscape photography, depth of field becomes more important. Nature photography combined with the occasional landscape shot is a challenge if you’re an amateur and can’t lay out the big $$$ for that mmmmmmmm 300mm f/2.8. Being on a very limited budget, I’m always open to cheap super telephoto options, and it’s all the better if one can hand-hold the lens.

So, working backward…. In order to hand-hold the Toyo 500mm, I would have maintain a 1/500 shutter speed. Assuming a bright sunlit day (so we can apply the Sunny f/16 rule, I would have to use 400 ASA film at the very least and set the aperture at approximately f/8 with a polarizer ( maybe go down to f/11). This would give me a hand-held shot, but risks underexposing the whole scene.

On a bright sunny day, slight under-exposure actually improves the picture, rendering bright colors more accurately – the light scatter causes colors to be slightly washed out. However. .. under-exposure can also make subdued colors muddy and ruin the picture.. when in doubt, or when dealing with a sun-shade situation, a 400 ASA is usually sufficient, but on occasion, an 800 ASA film may be indicated. The 1/500 shutter speed setting will now provide a slight (about 1/3 stop???) underexposure. If you’re in a cloudy situation, or in open shade, remember to either open up the lens to f/8 or increase exposure time to 1/250. It helps to play around a little to get the hang of it.

In actual practice, I’ve found that Fuji 400 ASA film was adequate at 1/500 sec in bright sunlight. I used a Maxxum T mount adapter to fit the lens to my Minolta Dynax 800si. Since the Toyo is smaller (and a bit shorter) than the Spiratone 400 f/6.3, it is marginally easier to handhold. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, though… the results will have to speak for themselves. Here are some of the pictures…

Note: To convert a Minolta Maxxum to manual operation ( and allow the shutter to fire) – mount the lens on the camera with the T mount adapter, and then hold down the mode (button with portrait) and AEL buttons simultaneously while turning the camera on. “OFF” will show briefly in the display – this means that the camera will not keep looking for an electronic signal from the lens, and just fire when the shutter release is depressed. Same principle applies when mounting Zuiko lenses on a Minolta using a Bower Maxxum-OM adapter.

For the following pictures, the distances ranged from 75 feet to 125 feet – with this series of pictures, I was trying to:

#1 establish that the 500mm Toyo Fivestar lens could be handheld, and
#2 that I could use it on the Minolta Dynax 800si with a Maxxum T-mount adapter, and
#3 Whether the lens resolution was worth a damn – pine needles and fence wire is always a good test

The fence gate and tree trunk show the ability of the Toyo 500 to reproduce texture. I like this lens.. cheap, well built, easily available, Universal T mount to fit on my Olympus OM or Minolta Dynax 800si, and fairly sharp at the edges. What more could I ask for? This definitely qualifies as a “Cheap Awesome Lens”. I’ll post another set of pictures I took with this lens fitted on my OM-2 with a Olympus T-mount.

Toyo FiveStar 500mm – 125 feet

Toyo FiveStar 500mm – 75 feet

Toyo FiveStar 500mm – 200 feet

Toyo FiveStar 500mm – 75 feet

Toyo FiveStar 500mm – 75 feet

Photographed with a Minolta Dynax 800si and Toyo Fivestar 500 f/8 lens. 1/500 second at f/8-f/11.
I’ll have some pictures of the Toyo 500mm f/8 setup on a Minolta 800si up soon…

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text and images © 2007 ajoy muralidhar. all names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners.

 

Close-up photography with a Soligor C/D 500mm Mirror lens

I always appreciate an opportunity to use my Soligor 500mm f/8 Mirror lens, and like most other mirrors, it has a “close focusing” ability that’s often marketed as “Macro”. The fixed aperture setting (f/8) imposes a few limitations, of course, but the ability to handhold a 500mm lens outweighs the disadvantages any day. I didn’t even have to go far… this beautiful Yoshino Cherry tree was in full bloom right outside my brother-in-law’s home in Gaithersburg MD. I walked around taking a few photographs, trying very hard to relax and keep my hands steady. I used my Olympus OM-2 camera, with 400 ASA film.

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Yoshino Cherry -500mm Soligor

Yoshino Cherry -500mm Soligor

Yoshino Cherry -500mm Soligor

Yoshino Cherry -500mm Soligor

Yoshino Cherry -500mm Soligor

Yoshino Cherry -500mm Soligor

Photographed with an Olympus OM-2, with a Soligor 500mm f/8 mirror lens and Fuji Superia 400 film. 1/250 second at f/8.

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text and images © 2007 ajoy muralidhar. all names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners.

 

Cheap Super Telephoto Lenses Part II – Roaming the countryside with a Spiratone 400mm f/6.3

This is a follow-up to the post I had a couple of weeks back where I described the merits of really cheap T mount long focus non-mirror lenses.

One of the lenses I had discussed was the ubiquituous Spiratone 400mm f/6.3 T mount pre-set lens, which appears in many different incarnations labelled variously as Spiratone, Lentar, Soligor, Tele-Astranar, Howard Sterling, Cambron etc etc. They are essentially the same lens, from the same manufacturing line, possibly Tamron.

Anyway, I took the opportunity last week when the weather was superlative, and the sun really bright to try some hand-held shots with the Spiratone. I like opportunistic photography, so even though I have a tripod in the trunk, I rarely use it. Tripods are great assets, but for a driveby opportunity or quickly changing situations, forget it. 🙂

I generally use 200 ASA film, but this time, my OM-1 was loaded with 400 ASA, so I decided to try the Spiratone out hand-held, using the Sunny F16 rule. With the 400 ASA film, the Sunny f/16 rule calls for a shutter speed setting of 1/500 second and an aperture of f/16. I was using a polarizer, so I used a setting of f/11 instead of f/16 to compensate for the filter.

Using the Spiratone 400mm’s aperture preset rings is really easy – there are 2 rings, use the first to set the aperture to the desired setting f/6.3 through f/32, and the other ring to Open or Close the aperture. Set the aperture, focus with the aperture ring set at Open, and when satisfied with the focus, turn the ring to the Close position, and take the shot. It’s much simpler and intuitive to do than it is to describe.

These pictures were taken around Carroll County on Frodinger Road, the farmer busily preparing his fields for Spring planting was about 1/4 mile away, and oblivious to me pulled up by the side of the road. I stayed in the car, so I could use the window as a support since the lens is so long.

The sunset was on my way home from work on MD Rte 27. The sun’s disk was positioned just above the horizon when I stopped. I had originally meant to use the Tripod, but I had very little time, so I ended up taking the shot hand held. The perspective compression of the 400mm lens is apparent in the flattening of the sun’s disk. I used a polarizer, and kept my sunshades on to protect my eyes. I avoided looking at the disk, just setting the lens focus at infinity.

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Spiratone 400mm f/6.3

Spiratone 400mm f/6.3

Spiratone 400mm f/6.3

Spiratone 400mm f/6.3

Spiratone 400mm f/6.3

Photographed with an OM-1 and Spiratone 400mm f/6.3 lens, 1/500 at f/11, Polarizing filter, Fuji Superia 400mm

Spiratone 400mm f/6.3

Spiratone 400mm f/6.3

These definitely could have benefited from the tripod. The moon photograph was at 1/500, f/6.3 (wide open, no filter). The horses were at 1/500 and f/11 with polarizer. Photographed with an OM-1 and Spiratone 400mm f/6.3 lens, Polarizing filter, Fuji Superia 400mm

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Compare the same scene, but this time shot with a Zuiko 200mm f/4, again using the Sunny f/16 rule, 1/500 sec at f/11 (instead of f/16, to compensate for the polarizer.)

Zuiko 200mm f/4

Zuiko 200mm f/4

Zuiko 200mm f/4

Here are the related Posts:
Cheap Super Telephoto Lenses Part I
Cheap Super Telephoto Lenses Part III
Learning to love your Mirror Lens

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text and images © 2007 ajoy muralidhar. all names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners.