gmango85

Get an APO Rodagon. It has Leica 39mm thread. You need a bellows unit as enlarging lenses do not focus.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Look at my post later in this thread.
All the information you need is in that post.

BebuLamar

I guess now that camera manufacturers don't make bellows for a long time now. The only Canon bellow units I found are those made for the FD mount. None is for the EF mount. The latest Nikon unit is the PB-6 which was made before the AF era and the only reason the Nikon unit is usable today because Nikon didn't change the lens mount. Novoflex makes some very nice bellows for different mounts but they are very expensive.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

The FD to EF adapter works GREAT on the EOS cameras for the Canon bellows.

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Picture Taker Loc: Michigan Thumb

Look up Mike Moats. He is a great guide (instructor) for you. He does not believe in using expensive equipment. He can show you ways to work at home with great results. Worth you time to look,

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

Without spending a small fortune, the vast majority of vintage manual focus/manual aperture lens mounts can easily be adapted for use on Canon EF mount cameras, including your 5DIII.

Because you will only be shooting macro with it, you can easily adapt a bellows with Nikon F-mount, Canon FD, Konica K/AR, Minolta MD, Olympus OM, Pentax M42, Pentax P/K (bayonet), Leica R, Exacta, Yashica FX and many other vintage mounts. Some of these are not adaptable for general purpose photography, but will be fine for macro. The "trick" will be finding an adapter that doesn't have any optics (which would ruin the image quality of the lens). Those aren't needed, but some adapters use them to allow a lens to focus to infinity... but spoil the lens' image quality in the process. There are some bargains on old bellows in odd-ball mounts. Any mounts that are still in wide use, such as Nikon F-mount, will tend to be fairly pricey. But bellows with "orphaned" mounting systems like Canon FD/FL or Konica K/AR can be bought for a lot less. The "problem" with some of these may be getting a lens to use upon it (but see below).

A bellows is simply an extra long, adjustable extension tube. You mention already having some of those. Maybe you should just add more? It will have the same effect.

A bellows is typically used for ultra-high magnification... up to around 5:1 or 5X magnification, depending upon the lens used upon it. Depending upon the lens, a bellows might not be able to do anything *less* than 1.5:1 or 2:1.

The vintage mount bellows we're discussing here will have no electronic connectivity with the lens. As a result, you'll need to handle all focus and aperture control manually. Depth of field becomes extremely shallow at high magnification. Because of that, precise focus is very important. You'll also be stopping down to unheard of effective apertures. With manual focus/manual aperture lenses that can be particularly challenging. When you stop down the fully manual aperture, you're viewfinder will dim down along with it. In turn that makes manual focus very difficult.

Some vintage bellows were "auto" designs... by that I mean they maintained an fully open aperture during focusing, and only actually stopped down at the actual instant of exposure. The way they did this in many cases was with a dual cable release... one part of which tripped a device to let the lens stop down to the pre-selected aperture, while the other cable acted to release the camera's shutter. There were add-on devices for this purpose in some systems, too.

While it is possible to mount an enlarging lens to a bellows (most enlarging lenses use a common mounting thread... M39 if memory serves), it may not be the most practical choice. There also are dedicated bellows lenses. Or, almost any lens, even ones not designed for macro, can be used on a bellows and "forced" to focus to much higher magnifications than usual.

A bellows and lens rig is fairly bulky for field work. The bellows itself is also rather fragile, requires some care in handling. Below is a photo of one I used years ago and still have in my vintage camera collection...



That's a Konica Auto Bellows with Hexanon 105mm f/4 Bellows lens mounted on it. It also has the dual cable release (mechanical release, won't trip the electronic shutter on a modern EOS camera... but could be used in a two-step process). That bellows also has a built-in geared focusing rail, which is another important accessory, especially for techniques like focus stacking. What's not shown is the dual flash system I also used with it. That was a pair of medium size Vivitar flash with fiber optic sensors that clip onto the lens hood to control flash output. They were mounted on a Lepp/Stroboframe Dual Flash bracket.

All in all, it was pretty much a "tripod only" rig. Not very practical for hand held shooting.

Another challenge with high magnification macro and vintage gear is exposure control. With ambient light or continuous light sources you can utilize Av (aperture priority) auto exposure with fully manual aperture vintage lenses. You also *might* be able to to use M + Auto ISO AE (I don't know for certain, I've never tried it). You definitely *cannot* use Tv or P AE modes, can't use full "Auto" or any "scene" modes. Strictly manual M (without Auto ISO) can be done too, but may require some extensive calculations.

Purely manual macro flash is particularly challenging. To do it with the above rig I worked out some "standard" settings by doing a lot of test shots. Wrote up a little cheat sheet with different magnifications, distances and apertures. (Thyristor flash have some auto exposure control of the strobe's output... but an accessory such as the fiber optic sensors that I used were necessary when shooting macro with them... I usually set one flash to full power and the other to 1/8 or 1/16 as a "fill".)

Honestly, how high magnification are you wanting to shoot?

1:1 magnification that almost all modern macro lenses can do will fill the short side of your camera's 24x36mm image area with a US 25 cent coin (which is 25mm diameter), without any cropping. A US 10 cent coin (15mm dia.) at 1:1 will more than fill the shorter dimension of the image area of an APS-C camera.

Below is a shot near 1:1 with Canon 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro lens (on an APS-C camera, with a diffused 550EX Speedlite)...



Here's another near 1:1 shot, this time with 180mm f/3.5L USM Macro (on full frame film camera), note the super shallow depth of field:



Contrast the above macro shots with the following shot of a tiny, freshly-hatched garden snail... about 5mm long I'd guess... smaller than the nail on my pinkie finger. Note the thickness of the edge of the leaf the snail is on. This is around 3.5:1 or 4:1 magnification, I'd estimate (on an APS-C camera, with MR-14EX Ringlite, tripod and focusing rail). Note the ultra shallow depth of field, even though the lens was stopped down to it's maximum of f/16 (which is an "effective" aperture around f/75 on this lens, due to the extension involved). It doesn't show in an Internet size and resolution image, but there is considerable loss of fine detail in this shot, due to the very small lens aperture. Would have been great to be able to focus stack.... but impossible because the snail was live and moving way too fast (have you ever heard of a "fast" snail before )...



I know some people do a whole lot of ultra high magnification photography. Personally I find the majority of mine is 1:1 or a little less.... some is 2:1... but not a lot is beyond that.

Canon doesn't offer a bellows for their modern EF/EOS system, due to the difficulty providing electronic communication between camera and lens. There are a few third party bellows... I think Novoflex still makes one. But they're ultra expensive. I've also seen kits for lens reversal that have an adapter with a cable that might be used to allow a modern lens and camera to communicate, even when mounted on a bellows.

Instead of a bellows, Canon offers the MP-E 65mm f/2.8 Macro lens. That's capable of 5:1 magnification, much like a bellows mounted lens. In fact, the *least* magnification the MP-E can do is 1:1, the max of many other macro lenses. The MP-E 65mm is manual focus only, but it's aperture is electronically controlled. It also is fitted with a tripod mounting ring (shares the Canon Ring B used by the 100mm f/2.8 USM and 180mm f/3.5L USM Macro lenses, as well as some other Canon lenses). It also has a built in slot on the front of the barrel to allow the Canon MR-14EX Ringlite and MT-24/26EX Twinlite Macro flash to be be directly mounted.

While the MP-E 65mm is a lot more compact and practical than the above vintage bellows rig, it's still going to require a tripod a lot of the time for the highest magnification work. Some use it hand held, though. Below is my MP-E 65mm on one of my DSLRs, with the MR-14EX installed on it...



That MP-E 65mm is the only lens I use with the Ringlite, shown above. Some people use that type of flash for other work, but I personally prefer it for high magnification work and other types of flash for lower magnification work. For that I either use the MT-24EX Twinlite:




Or I just hand-hold a single, regular full size flash I've diffused with a couple layers of gauze over the head, to reduce the output and not over-power close-up subjects....




The reason I bring up flash is because it's often a struggle to find sufficient light for macro shots. You're likely to need supplemental lighting at times and it's pretty easily done with modern gear... It's not impossible, but flash work is fairly difficult with older gear such as bellows and fully manual exposure systems. You might find your options fairly limited. Canon "EX" flash, if you have one or more of them, might work in TTL auto exposure mode with old lenses ("ETTL" flash, as Canon calls it, is another form of auto exposure even when used with M camera exposure mode and no Auto ISO).

There are some other ways to do high magnification macro.

I briefly mentioned lens reversing above, which is one way. I can't suggest a specific lens for that purpose, but others might be able to do so. I've heard of it being done with modern lenses ranging from 28mmm to 135mm. There also have been some adapters that maintain electronic lens-camera communication, allowing reversal this to be done with modern lenses (which I also suggested for possible use with bellows, above).

Also, you can push a standard macro lens above it's 1:1 limit by adding one or more of the extension tubes you say you already have. I just looked up the 100mm Canon macro lens I use and see that a 12mm extension tube pushes it to approx. 1.25:1 and a 25mm tube increases it to around 1.4:1. Canon only lists their own two extension tubes and doesn't give guidance for other extension tubes, such as the Kenko set of 12, 20 and 36mm that I use, along with several of the Canon tubes. Nor do they list the greater magnification possible if multiple tubes are stacked for even more extension. All three Kenko tubes together make for 68mm of extension should push a 100mm macro lens close to 2:1.

There also have been variable macro extension tubes... technically called a "helicoid", but advertised as a "macro zoomer". Those are rigid, but adjustable tubes with a range of approx. 40mm to 70mm of extension. I haven't used them in modern systems and haven't seen them advertised recently, but they were being offered a couple years ago. I used a helicoid with my older, manual focus gear. While it was designed for use with one specific lens, it could be used on others to good effect too.

Finally, there are some third party lenses that push the limits, with greater than 1:1 magnification. For example, Mitakon Zhongyi recently introduce an 85mm 1X to 5X, similar to Canon's MP-E 65mm, except the Mikakon lens is fully manual... both focus and aperture control. It's also less than half the cost of the Canon lens. With longer focal length, it has more working distance than the Canon lens (which has very little at full 5:1) too. And, like the MP-E, it includes a tripod mounting ring. I haven't used it or seen any reviews yet, but it may be worth checking out and a much easier way to do high magnification macro!

There's a recent article about doing low-budget focus stacking over on Petapixel web site.

Scott ("Screamin Scott"?) here on UHH and some others are heavily into high magnification macro and likely to give you some good advice. There's a UHH macro sub-forum you might want to subscribe to. Scott is also on Flickr.... I see his work there a lot.

Hope this helps and gives you some more ideas!

P.S. If you decide to go with a vintage bellows, something to watch out for is that many of them use a thick, white nylon bushing... often with a dovetail design... at their mounting rail. Those old nylon rings often are cracked and beginning to disintegrate. I worked with a friend some years ago to restore several bellows with that problem, replacing the old nylon bushings with custom-made new ones in Delrin. Worked well, but it would be rather pricey repair to have made if you don't have access to the materials and a machine shop to shape the parts. Be sure to look closely at those bushings, on any old bellows.

Also, I found one of the lens reversal devices. I have not used it personally, but it might also be pretty easily rigged for use on a bellows too, allowing modern camera & lens electronic communication. https://www.amazon.com/Meike-Automatic-Multifunctional-Extension-MK-C-UP/dp/B01GHSET8W/ref=sr_1_5?crid=9EPZU39VD9VS&dchild=1&keywords=canon+reverse+lens+mount&qid=1584908341&sprefix=canon+reverse++%2Cstripbooks%2C230&sr=8-5 There also is the far more expensive Novoflex version: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/197010-REG/Novoflex_EOSRETRO_Reverse_Lens_Adapter.html/?ap=y&ap=y&smp=y&smp=y&lsft=BI%3A514&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIp__AoPWu6AIV9CCtBh2SWAIREAQYAiABEgLLZPD_BwE

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Not practical?
Did you miss my earlier post here?

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CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Are you using your extension tubes with your 70-200 ready? Most of the comments I scanned talk about new equipment, but this zoom is extremely sharp and anything like the Extension Tube EF 25 (or similar length tube) will let you get quite close. The 2x might soften the details too much, but that along with the tube is a valid technical configuration, if you find the image details acceptable.

RWR Loc: La Mesa, CA

Did you read the OP? “I have shot macro with the extension tubes and the 70-200 and like the results, but want to get down to the really small stuff.”

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Looks like I nodded off by that final sentence ....

Everything of the Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro seems like that is the right choice.

Picture Taker Loc: Michigan Thumb

I'm not sure any more what was said and not going back.
If you are looking at Macro Lens, I think you should look at a 100mm range lens, with a shorter lens you will have to get closer to the subject. A 180mm you can even be back more but, they are more expensive. I noticed some one suggested a rack track, they make a big difference. I personally use a 5D a Canon 100mm and the rack on my tripod.

Leitz Loc: Solms

Depth of field with microscope objectives is no shallower than with an enlarging lens at the same magnification ratio and aperture,

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

The camera mounts to the bellows via an adapter, the lenses do fit straight to the bellows, unless I mount them in reverse. Then I use a reversing ring!