N scale photography w/ Nikkor 105mm micro lens

[wcfn100]

I've been waiting to rent a Nikkor 105mm micro lens for a couple months now and finally was able to get a full week.  I've been curious about this lens due to the fact that you can get macro shots from a further distance than I'm used to.

The first shot is a regular roster shot.



I don't see much difference here except maybe something with the perspective. I'll have to do another setup and switch to my normal lens.

Next is a two car setup.



You can see that I had to back up far enough to run off the front of the table.  The cars aren't at much of an angle, but I was still pleased with the DOF.

Then I just did some close up shots.








To get an idea of what a 105mm lens will do.  The last picture with the CGW reporting marks was taken with the front of the lens positioned 5" away from the car.  This is a close I could go and still focus.

I've a lot of other tests to run.  Feel free to ask something if you've ever been curious about this lens.  I might as well get my $50 worth.

Jason

[up1950s]

To get as close as you got on the CGW and CNJ , I need to be in super macro , were you ?

The 2 car shot , was that in macro , it came out great ?

The tractors front tire looks a bit out of focus , were you in macro or super macro ?

[wcfn100]

I may not be smart enough to answer your questions but I'll do my best.

What your talking about ( I think) has more to do with digital point and shoot cameras.  They use the term 'macro' to say they can get really close to something and focus on it so you can view it nice and big (if you have the MPs).  Thats a bit different different than using a special 'macro' or micro lens on an SLR camera.  The term 'macro' here means that the image that is put on the sensor is about 1:1 with the object.

I guess they have about the same effect for our purposes, but they are different.

In the case of the CGW shot, to do that with a point and shoot you would need to be like an inch away.  With the 105mm lens, I can sh0ot from 5" away.  I would assume the 60mm macro lens would need to be about 2.5" away.  I'm basically trying to see two things; does a macro lens give me any shots I need tha I can't get with a regular 18-55mm zoom lens, and is the ability to take these kinds of shots from a futher distance away help when it come to N scale photography. I'll probably rent the 60mm micro lens in a couple weeks to compare.


So to answer the questions, no, no and no.


Maybe someone else can be clearer.


Jason

[up1950s]

Thanks , I understand perfectly . I am a newbie with these things called digital cameras and SLR's . I can't get over how clear that double car shot is front to back and side to side , and it's not square to the camera .   

[Chris333]

I have no idea what I'm talking about, but...

My camera will focus with an object right up to the lens, but you will get a sort of fish eye effect since you are so close. I think Jason's lens let you get the same close up shot from further away so things don't distort.

Yeah, thats the ticket.

[tom mann]

I just picked up a 50mm macro lens based on a recommendation from lashedup.  The flexibility is awesome - previously, I had to rely on cropping or using a clip-on macro lens which had limitations.

[DKS]

In 35mm film terms, a 105mm lens is considered to be on the longer end of normal, with 50mm on the shorter end of normal ("normal" being considered neither wide-angle nor telephoto). But DSLRs have ~22mm sensors, so to get the equivalent lens length, take the 35mm lens length and multiply it by ~1.6. A 50mm lens on a DSLR is then equivalent to an 80mm lens on a 35mm film camera, while a 105mm on a DSLR is equivalent to ~168mm lens on a 35mm film camera, which is slightly telephoto.

This explains why you need to back away from the subject a bit further than you might expect. It also explains why the DOF is a little deeper, because DOF increases as you move further away from the lens. You'll notice that things look flatter (perspective is less pronounced, approaching isometric in appearance), even though the subjects are on an angle, as telephotos tend to flatten subjects. A 50mm macro lens is often preferred for DSLR macro photography, as it's closer to normal for DSLRs than 105mm.

Point-and-shoot digital cams usually have zoom lenses that range from slightly wide to short-ish telephoto (often with digital zooming to medium telephoto). The macro capability is integrated into the wide-angle end of the zoom, which is why point-and-shoot macro images will tend to look a little fish-eyed. It's also why the DOF is shallower, too, because the closer you work to a lens, the shallower the DOF becomes.

[wcfn100]

A 50mm macro lens is often preferred for DSLR macro photography, as it's closer to normal for DSLRs than 105mm.

  Most of what I've seen/read suggests otherwise.  If its just a choice between a 60mm or a 105mm, the 105mm get the most recommendations.  No doubt the 60mm is preferred based on price however.

  With the 105mm lens you're able to get true macro shots from further away.  From a modelers stand point that can help in two areas.  First you don't need to set the camera an inch from the subject which can be difficult in tight situations on a layout or create an odd angle for object close to the "ground".  Second, the greater working distance allows you to get out of the way of your lighting.

I doubt I'll get enough out of it to justify the $700+ street price.  It can also be used as a good protrait type lens which could be handy with a little one on the the way.  I think I've taken enough pictures of the cats with it to get my $50 worth.




Jason

[DKS]

With the 105mm lens you're able to get true macro shots from further away.  From a modelers stand point that can help in two areas.  First you don't need to set the camera an inch from the subject which can be difficult in tight situations on a layout or create an odd angle for object close to the "ground".  Second, the greater working distance allows you to get out of the way of your lighting.

Absolutely correct. Layout photography is certainly easier with a longer lens. Tabletop photography tends to look a little better with a shorter lens, though, since the image is not as flat; "big" things like freight cars will appear bigger.

[tom mann]

With object like cats or insects or things that would be annoyed if you get too close, the 105 lens would be best - hence the literature you've seen.  But with still objects, the 60 would be fine.  Since you are not required to use the lens at 1:1, you can back up with the 60 to get full scenes.  The 60 would also eliminate the telephoto isometric look that the 105 is slightly showing.  If the models were more angled, it would be more pronounced.

[Walkercolt]

Now I'll throw this out into the mix. You get a much more "natural" perseptive of N-scale when shot with a 24mm or 28mm lens on a 35mm camera. Things in the foreground are rendered big, while objects in reality on 3-4" away look "farther away", much like you would see trackside with a 35mm lens on your 35mm camera, and with more realistic depth of focus than using Helicon or other software solutions. The covers I've shot for NSR magazine that Kirk liked best were taken with a 35mm lens on a 645 medium format camera(25mm equilivent to 35mm, or about 18mm on most DSLR's). The most difficult thing is to position the lens near "human hieght" in N-scale...less than 12mm above the scenery base. I've tried first surface mirror periscopes to do this, with at best fair results. The Dykstra Bros. had excellent results with a 55mm Micro-Nikkor on an F-2 with the very large models in "Star Wars". In the first film, all the model and special effects sequeneces were shot one frame at a time with a plain-old Nikon F-2 with a 55mm Micro-Nikkor. Nearly one million frames shot one at a time. Now they have designed and built special cine and electronic cameras for their "magic". I attended their seminar at the PP of A convention some years ago. It was quite impressive. They call their company "Industrial Light and Sound" because they were set-up in an old industrial warehouse in the "City of Industry" in LA, and were paid the astounding sum of $50,000 by George Lucas intially for "Star Wars". Talk about "Rags to Riches"!

[DKS]

The Dykstra Bros. had excellent results with a 55mm Micro-Nikkor on an F-2 with the very large models in "Star Wars". In the first film, all the model and special effects sequeneces were shot one frame at a time with a plain-old Nikon F-2 with a 55mm Micro-Nikkor. Nearly one million frames shot one at a time. Now they have designed and built special cine and electronic cameras for their "magic". I attended their seminar at the PP of A convention some years ago. It was quite impressive. They call their company "Industrial Light and Sound" because they were set-up in an old industrial warehouse in the "City of Industry" in LA, and were paid the astounding sum of $50,000 by George Lucas intially for "Star Wars". Talk about "Rags to Riches"!

Not sure where you got all this. George Lucas commissioned John Dykstra (apprentice to Douglas Trumbull, who did the effects for 2001) to establish a new company so that he could make the special effects for Star Wars, because 20th Century had just closed their effects shop. The new company, Industrial Light and Magic, set up shop in the corner of a newly-built industrial building at the Los Angeles airport. Also, the camera used for Star Wars and many of the films to follow was an ancient VistaVision, a motion picture camera previously used in Cecil B. De Mille's The Ten Commandments, chosen for its precision mechanism (plus it was relatively cheap and readily available); most of the models they built averaged just a few feet long. They did use a heavily-modified Nikon 35mm camera for the mine car effects in The Temple of Doom. (An off-the-shelf 35mm SLR won't work because the film must be pin-registered.)

[Walkercolt]

David, I saw the home videos they shot of their set-ups using two Oxberry pin-registered Nikon F-2's with a beam-splitter on the lens so they could shoot color film and ortho for "blue screening" simultainiously. Their original "digs" were very modest, and Fox still had their FX Dept. but George Lucas couldn't afford the union labor and techincians. Harrison Ford was framing houses when he was hired, Mark Hamil was working on a "B-movie" "Corvette Summer" at the same time, and Carrie Fisher was the only one to sign a "percentage of gross" contract, instead of a flat fee, much to her father Eddie Fisher's anger at a famous Hollywood resturant. John Dykstra said his brother and  he, shot everything on ISO40 Kodachrome "A", because they knew it would be at least 5 generations "deep" by the time it hit the screen. It was a shoestring operation with checks for film coming in only days before it was needed. When "Star Wars" became the Mega-hit, everybodies contracts(but Carrie Fisher's) were re-negotiated. Carrie Fisher made more from the original "Star Wars" than George Lucas did.

[DKS]

David, I saw the home videos they shot of their set-ups using two Oxberry pin-registered Nikon F-2's with a beam-splitter on the lens so they could shoot color film and ortho for "blue screening" simultainiously. Their original "digs" were very modest, and Fox still had their FX Dept. but George Lucas couldn't afford the union labor and techincians. Harrison Ford was framing houses when he was hired, Mark Hamil was working on a "B-movie" "Corvette Summer" at the same time, and Carrie Fisher was the only one to sign a "percentage of gross" contract, instead of a flat fee, much to her father Eddie Fisher's anger at a famous Hollywood resturant. John Dykstra said his brother and  he, shot everything on ISO40 Kodachrome "A", because they knew it would be at least 5 generations "deep" by the time it hit the screen. It was a shoestring operation with checks for film coming in only days before it was needed. When "Star Wars" became the Mega-hit, everybodies contracts(but Carrie Fisher's) were re-negotiated. Carrie Fisher made more from the original "Star Wars" than George Lucas did.

I've not found any evidence that they used anything but the VistaVision cameras when shooting the miniatures (other than the mine shots from Temple of Doom). Oxberry cams were used with beam-splitters to shoot two, four or eight elements at once on their optical printers to reduce the number of film generations required for compositing. The traveling mattes were extracted from the original film negatives on the optical printer to 35mm ortho film; the final composite film was exposed up to 200 times. Oxberrys were used in order to maintain the quasi-70mm image resolution produced by the 35mm VistaVision cameras.

And not to quibble, but according to the book Industrial Light and Magic,

By the time George Lucas was making Star Wars, no studio had a special effects faclility; he had to create his own mini-studio to do the work.

This was ILM's birthplace at the LA airport--hardly the run-down warehouse that seems to have become an urban legend about Star Wars' roots:



Also, I can find no reference anywhere to Dykstra working with his brother.

If I'd grown up on the west coast instead of the east, I'd very likely be working for ILM today, since film and in particular special effects production has been a lifelong passion. I graduated college when Star Wars was released, and I was on the verge of moving to California, but those plans fell through. So I settled for building my own Oxberry to shoot special effects images for a studio in NJ, up until the time computers made the kind of film work I was doing obsolete.

[GaryHinshaw]

Back on the topic of N scale photography... I'd like some advice from the cognoscenti.  Here's a recent shot I took of some well cars:



I really like this angle, but depth of field is a challenge (trains are rather demanding in that way).  What is the best way to improve depth of field on a composition like this? First from a hardware standpoint (what kind of lens, how far from the subject, etc.), then software (Helicon, other?).  Don't be afraid to be very elementary - in fact a pointer to a good tutorial would be great.

Thanks in advance!