Canon A70 Close-Up and Macro Lenses

[ekrunaj]

I'm looking for good quality close-up and macro lenses for use on the Canon A70. Specifically, I'm trying to set up a slide copy rig for 35mm and 6x4.5cm slides and negatives. Ideally the lens would allow me to copy a 35mm slide with the A70 CCd at full frame. I already have the LA-DC52C conversion lens adapter, which allows me to use a 52mm thread.

[Jon]

I think you're going something beyond the reasonable limits for that particular camera. Without having run the numbers, you're going to need something like a +10 diopter close-up lens. In that range of glass, the best ones are reversed 35 mm SLR lenses. There are slide copiers available for digital P&S cameras, but most of them are geared for 35 mm slides. Dealing with 6x4.5 may be pushing things just a bit. I'd really suggest buying/renting a film scanner if you have a lot, sending them out to be scanned if there are a few, or getting a DSLR and macro lens for added flexibility.

[Bodryn]

I've been looking into this same thing for some time and from what I can gather the best bet for 35mm slides is to get a very high quality slide scanner, scan all your slides, and then resell the scanner to minimize expense. Some people spend thousands of dollars on a slide scanner and they get very good results. Many have special software to compensate for the idiosyncracies of various films and whatnot, color balance and so on. I have taken a few pictures of slides with my A70 just by mounting 52mm close up lenses from my old 35mm camera onto the A70 lens adapter; it can work but not all that well and there are issues concerning field curvature, i.e., with simpler lenses you can focus in on the center OR the edge of the slide but not on the whole slide at once, unless you have really complex lenses. (Some people report some success by using a reversed 35mm camera lens as mentioned above.) I suppose if you do go the A70 route, though, you might also connect up the color screen monitor cord between your A70 and a TV so that you have a large screen to judge how well focused the slides are while you're doing it, because the LCD screen just isn't good enough to judge focus.

[Don Schaeffer]

I don't know what your standards are like, but I got acceptable (for me) results scanning all my wedding slides using an Epson Perfection 1250 scanner with a adapter.

[ekrunaj]

The end result that I am looking for is to copy hundreds of 35mm and 6x4.5cm slides and negatives to .jpegs.,which in turn would be used to make slide shows unto DVDs for presentation on a TV screen. If I intend to print ,I will of course, use a film scanner. The reversed lens yields an image that is too close up. I tried it with a 50mm 1.8 Nikkor in the reverse position,and the most I could copy of a 35mm slide was 1/4 of the image. The "Canon A70 Super Macro" article in this forum by "megaweb" indicates a macro of 2.5:1. I have looked around, and the most promising solution is a Raynox DCR150 Macro Conversion Lens. It yields a 37x28mm image at a distance to object of 80cm at a magnification of 1.9x. Apparantly it uses hi index optical glass in 2 groups of 3 lenses. If anyone out there has had some working experience with this lens, your comments would be appreciated.

[Jon]

A 50 mm lens is a +20 diopter; your experience with it is in line with my suggestion of a +10 diopter. A lens' diopter value is 1/focal length in meters. You'd need a smaller diopter value for 645 transparencies. One advantage to working with a scanner intended for film is that it'll have provisions for "reversing" negatives to achieve positive images without all sorts of colour balance fussing. Film scanners also usually have "repair" tools for dust or scratches, which you'd need to fix manually if you photograph the slides. Even an inexpensive flat-bed scanner with film capabilities will give you a perfectly acceptable resolution scan for either TV viewing or projection, as the display devices are not that high resolution.

[Bodryn]

I have a CanoScan 5000f that I used to scan in a number of items. It did a very good job on prints, both color and b/w for which I didn't have negatives. It has a slide feature also but I found that my slides almost had to be overexposed to appear bright enough digitally, requiring a lot of correction, and difficulty in maintaining good color. Far worse was trying to convert 35mm color negatives. I used Jasc PSP v.8 to try and color correct them but the results were never satisfactory and in fact the 35mm sprocket holes affected the coloring adjacent to the holes so there wasn't uniform discoloration. Another problem using a scanner like this is that I could do no more than four at a time and it seems like a major afternoon task just to convert three boxes of 20 or 36 slides. I was also tempted to substitute my own light source as the scanner light source seemed inadequate. Some of the dedicated slide scanners have automatic feeds as I understand it so you can go away and let it work for you.