Better modeling.

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While the ring flash light works well it’s totally shadowless, meaning there is no modeling of depth as there are no shadows. Desirous of adding these, I experimented on a macro of a beautiful portabella mushroom using my ancient remote flash trigger on the Leica SL2-S. The transmitter goes in the hot shoe and the receiver plugs into my Novatron studio strobe power pack. Despite dire warnings in the SL2-S’s instruction manual that use of non-approved triggers might damage the camera I had at it, knowing that the transmitter works faultlessly with my Nikon D800, so I guessed all would be all right with the SL2-S. And it is.

I first wrote about this trigger in 2006 when using a Canon 5D and you can click here for details. Doubtless similar devices remain available inexpensively on eBay. The transmitter in the camera’s hot shoe is used wirelessly and the SL2-S must be set to use the mechanical shutter. As the Instruction Manual confirms, flash will not be triggered in electronic shutter mode owing to the possibility of rolling shutter banding effects.

For the image below I wanted to get the base of the mushroom’s stem sharp, with the focus range extending all the way to the beautiful folds. This necessitates no fewer than 77 exposures, the full travel length of the lower rack on the Leitz Focusing Bellows II. Helicon Focus Pro handled the DNG files with aplomb, rendering the stacked result in no time. Maybe 30 seconds. I’m using an Apple Mini M4 in base configuration. The resulting stacked file in DNG format came in at an economical 64mB. And boy, is it a cracker:

Click the image for a larger version.

The 135mm Elmar was set to f/16, the three Novatron strobes at half-power, handling the 77 exposures, one every 2 seconds, with aplomb. I confess I closed my eyes to avoid the worst of all that flashing. Probably the first time I have taken a photograph with my eyes closed.

Leica SL2-S, Leitz Focusing Bellows II, Leitz 135mm Elmar lens head, three Novatron studio strobes, shutter set at 1/125 second. ISO 400.

Edible art.

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Slice a Kiwi pole-to-pole and it’s pretty mundane inside. But cut it across the equator and magic happens.

Leica SL2-S, Leitz Focusing Bellows II, 135mm Elmar lens head, LED ring light. 5 stacked selective focus images combined in Helicon Focus. It’s a flat subject so few images are required. ISO 400.

Aka Red Pepper.

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More details here.

Leica SL2-S, Leitz Focusing Bellows II, 135mm Elmar lens head, LED ring light.
50 stacked selective focus images combined in Helicon Focus. ISO 400.

Just in time.

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These beautiful blossoms line the streets here but sadly last no more than a few days. I was lucky to snip one off a local tree and carefully conveyed it to the studio for some Helicon work:

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Leica SL2-S, 135mm Elmar lens head at f/4 on the Leitz Focusing Bellows II, LED ring light. ISO 400, 1/30th second. Composite of 48 (!) images focus stacked in Helicon Focus.

Proof of concept.

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In Part I I detailed the hardware requirements to use an ancient Leica Bellows II for the M mount with a 135mm Elmar lens head and a variety of extension tubes, all used with an LED ring light.

I just ran a first test, using a pine cone as the subject.

Here’s the setting:

The LED light is some 24″ from the pine cone.

The Leica SL2-S’s exposure mode was set to Manual so that the same exposure would be used for the multiple images required for focus stacking in Helicon Focus. I set the LED ring light to maximum brightness and, after establishing critical focus at f/4 on the base of the pine cone using the handy magnification feature of the camera’s EVF, I proceeded to take 17 images of the pine cone. The focus for each was varied a small amount using the secondary rack and pinion rail of the Focusing Bellows II. This has a handy tightening lever which was set part way to prevent the lens assembly from drifting on the lower rack. While the sweet spot for the 135mm Elmar if f/8 to f/11 I used the maximum aperture of f/4. This would constitute a critical test of the focus stacking software. The shutter speed was 1/250th and IBIS was turned on. ISO was 2200. Though I used Auto ISO it is better practice to use manual ISO to ensure constant exposure across the range of constituent images.

The images were imported to Helicon Focus (v 9.0.2) and combined into one image, sharp overall.

Here is the result in LR Classic, top left, followed by the 17 constituent images:

The images and result in LRc.

Here is the final result.

Click the image for a larger version.

Check the large version and you can see that my focus on the base of the cone was incorrect, denying optimum results from Helicon Focus, but as a proof of concept for the rig and the application this is a promising start.

How to change focus when taking multiple images for focus stacking:

Changing focus using the extension of the focusing bellows is decidedly sub-par. A minuscule change in the bellows extension results in a large change in the plane of focus. By contrast using the lower rack of the Focusing Bellows II to move the camera/bellows/lens assembly nearer to – or further from – the subject is relatively insensitive to the change in the plane of focus. As an example, a subject depth of one inch at life size may require three to four dozen changes in the position of the camera, meaning three to four dozen exposures, easily done with the lower rack, where changes of as little as one millimeter are easy to accomplish. This is virtually impossible to achieve using the variable extension of the bellows itself.

If you are using a bellows without a lower focus rack, Novoflex makes one but as with most of their products the pricing is plain silly. The sole advantage I can see is that the rack range is 14.8″, which is large. Instead, check eBay searching for ‘Macro Focusing Rack’ and you will find many choices for under $50. But better yet spring for a Leitz Focusing Bellows II and experience the ne plus ultra of German mechanical engineering for a modest outlay.