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.
You can’t beat the price.
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Cost:
You can be profligate and blow $215 for a wired Leica remote. Or you can be frugal, and spend $6 on one of these. You will also need a 2.5mm to 3.5mm adapter, another $7. While Pholsy makes versions with several different connectors, the 3.5mm jack does not appear to be available, hence the need for the adapter.
There’s also a Bulb option – you press the button and, while depressed, slide it forward. With the camera set to ‘B’ the shutter remains open until this move is reversed. No battery is required.
Wireless option:
If you require wireless operation then something like this, which works with Panasonic cameras, will probably do the trick, though I have not tried it. Again the 2.5mm to 3.5mm adapter will be required for the SL2-S body and likely with any SL series mirrorless Leica. A couple of reviews suggest it works fine.
In use:
I’m using this for tripod macro work with my Leica macro kit where smaller apertures dictate slow shutter speeds, given the modest light output of my LED ring light. While the SL2-S’s IBIS is turned on it’s never good to tempt fate and a remote release takes out any risk of camera shake, along with use of the vibrationless electronic shutter option. (Menu->Page 2->Shutter Type->Electronic). As the Electronic Shutter is silent I also turn on the Acoustic Signal (Menu->Page 6->Camera Settings->Acoustic Signal->Electronic Shutter Sound->On). I set the Acoustic Signal volume to High as I can barely hear it on Low, a problem I attribute to anno domini. The aural confirmation assures you that you have snapped the photo.
Focus stacking:
In practice this makes for very easy use with focus stacking. You determine the range of movement of the Focusing Bellows and then, starting at one end of the range snap a picture, move the bellows a tiny bit, snap another, and so on until the other end of the desired range of sharpness is reached. The calibrated rail on the rack of the Bellows makes this easy. I find that taking, say, two dozen images this way takes but a few seconds, whereafter the SD card is off to the card reader for passing the images through Helicon Focus.
Leica Fotos – pass:
One alternative idea is to use the remote trigger in the Leica Fotos app on your iPhone, but as the likelihood of that app connecting with the camera is as likely as my emigrating to North Korea, I pass on that approach.
The result:
Manual focus, obviously, and ISO fixed at 400. The shutter speed was 1/3 second. The camera’s distance from the subject was varied across the whole range of the lower focus rack on the Focusing Bellows II. f/8 is the sweet spot of the 135mm Elmar, now 66 years old, for macro work, but even at the full aperture of f/4 the lens is tack sharp. Modern digital sensors make these old optics sing. Adobe RAW (DNG to Leica fans) was used in both the camera, Lightroom Classic and Helicon Focus, with only the final result output to JPG.
This makes for a simply gorgeous large print:
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:
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 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:
Here is the final result.
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.
