Bellows - features to look for

I have had fun with my Kenko tubes and have noticed lots of different bellows available on ebay at not too bad of a price and I thought it would be fun to experiment with them. What are some of the things I could/should look for. I know whatever I get would be a comprimise likely anyhow. Are they even worth getting? Some things are;

-what brands have the best quality
-what lens mount to get. M42 seems common, are there others to lok for or look out for.
-it would seem the double rail system would be best as you can set the focal lentgh then slide the whole thing to focus, is this right
-what would be good lenses to get
-lot's of them seem to come with slide duplicators, is this worthwhile, or should I just scan them
-what are some of the drawbacks using bellows
-and on, and on.............

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Bellows are like tubes in that they won't affect the lens. You will need to worry about light leaks though.

Double or monorail isn't really an issue - you can have separate focussing and standard controls with either. A good monorail from a name brand company will be immensely solid. If you're thinking of using a longish lens on there, make sure it's a sturdy rail and standards.

You might want to find an "auto-bellows" style,so you can set up with the lens at maximum aperture and quickly stop down to shooting aperture.

Are you planning to do a lot of slides? if so, a slide duplicating attachment may be better than using a flat-bed scanner. A dedicated film scanner would be still better if you have a real lot of slides/negs to convert.

Figure the bellows will probably start you at around 1/2 life-size or more, depending on the lens you use. A "short-barrel" lens will let you take this to a lower magnification, since the short barrel versions make allowances for the size of the bellows proper.

Check out what you can get EF adapters for without too much trouble; if there's no immediate EF adapter, you'll end up cobbling something together that will be an even greater magnification to start with because of the stacked converters.

The point of bellows is to provide a light-tight mounting of the camera and the lens at an adjustible distance while remaining parallel. Stiffer is better, and bigger, heavier parts are stiffer.

I have a Pentacon bellows designed for the medium-format Pentacon Six. The bellows are very large in diameter to accommodate the larger format, but this is useful because it's easier to mount lenses into it. Those bellows are quite rigid and generally only cost about $65 on ebay. Even with the adaptor you need to mount it on a Canon, you'll still spend less than $100.

The best lenses depend on what you want to photograph. If you want to use it for copy work, enlarger lenses are great for this. They have a highly corrected flat field with no geometric distortion, and they are generally very sharp. I have two enlarger lenses, a 139mm Bausch and Lomb Tessar and a 105mm EL-Nikkor. The Tessar is pre-war and uncoated, giving a really old-world look. And 139mm is long enough so that it will focus to infinity even on the bellows. The 105 is modern, multicoated, and superb for nearly any macro application. I mounted both to the Pentacon bellows by boring a hole in a plastic body cap.

Most normal lenses are excellent in macro applications when reversed, because they are optimized for the short distance to the film plane. You can readily and cheaply get a 62mm reversing ring for the Pentacon Six mount, and then adapt those threads to the filter ring of whatever lens you want to use.

Any lens you use must allow manual control of the aperture, because you won't have the eletronic connection to the camera. Put the camera on M or Av, and the latter will provide auto exposure even taking the bellows draw into account.

And get a good tripod.

I have not been too impressed with the cheapie slide duplicators I've seen. I can mount my bellows and camera above using the Nikkor on a tripod pointing down to my light box, and put the slide on the light box, when I need to dupe slides. That gives me quite a lot of control over framing and so on. It's far more productive than using a film scanner, though I also have one of those.

And I also have the 50mm macro, which is more convenient when I don't need true macro and also when I need a shorter working distance (such as reproducing prints on a copy stand).

Rick "who needs to go dig up that old 50mm Schneider Componon for mounting on the bellows, come to think of it" Denney

Thanks for the input, I think I am slowly getting the idea

I understand the set up and stop down of aperture and why but do not understand the "auto-bellows" feature though have see it advertised.

I only plan on doing a few hundred and this will be over time.

When you say "short-barrel" lens do you mean short focal length? I'm still a little grey here.

Aside from a few slides I would like to do close-up work with flowers, bugs that will cooperate and the like. It does seem like a 105mm lens is advertised for copying. I would imagine that the shorter the lens, the greater the magnification for the length of bellows extended.

Is this to get greater magnification than mounted normaly? I assume the lens always goes on the end of the bellows, not the camera end.

I have seen this setup shown somewhere before, would be willing to try to replicate this for copying slides.

I assume you mean using it such with out the bellows

Boy Rick, you sure do have a lot of middle names.

"Auto-bellows" usually means that there is a linkage between the aperture of the lens and the camera. Given that Canon's aperture control is electronic, there is nothing useful about auto bellows adapted to a Canon. Some bellows also provide a stop-down capability using a two-cable cable release. One cable attaches to the front standard of the bellows and mechanically stops down the lens, and the other fires the camera a bit later. These are of limited use because our cameras use electronic cable releases. There are M42 bellows that can allow lenses to be stopped down this way, but I'm not sure that's all that much easier than just turning the aperture ring and counting clicks. Up to you. Most of the lenses I would want to adapt for bellows use do not have auto apertures, though, so it's of little use to me even those the Pentacon bellows supports it for Pentacon Six lenses and I do have the doubled-headed cable release. Regular lenses are not the best lenses for macro use unless you reverse them.

A short-barrel lens is one that is designed with a shorter barrel to accommodate the thickness of the bellows when fully closed to allow infinity focus. Few were ever made. If the focal length is long enough, the typical symmetrical enlarger lens has a short enough barrel to permit infinity focus.

Yes, the shorter the lens, the greater the magnification at a give bellows draw. But also the shorter the working distance. I use short lenses when I specifically want shorter working distances, such as while using the copy stand. For most field macro subjects, however, including bugs and flowers, a longer working distance from a lens like the 105 (which is quite long on a small sensor) at a given magnification (not bellows draw) will mean the lens is less likely to cast a shadow on the subject or frighten it away. A longer lens, though, will require more bellows draw to attain a given magnification, and you may run out of bellows. You can always use extension tubes between the camera and the bellows, however, or between the bellows and the lens.

Rick "who has only one middle name but thousands of internyms" Denney

At least some auto-bellows can be manually tripped, which means you'll be able to quickly stop down to working aperture without having to fiddle around with the lens once you've set everything up. Canon's old FD auto-bellows could do this if needed. It was a lot more convenient than using the same lenses on the old Spiratone T-mount bellows.

For a few hundred slides, I wouldn't go out of my way to get a slide duplicator attachment, especially if it's gooing to be over time. But if the price is right, I wouldn't shy away from a rig that offers one as part of the package.

With a bellows, you'll usually have about 4-6" of extension, which will get even a regular 100-150 mm lens to 1:1. A short-barrel, or an enlarger, lens won't get as much; if you plan to be working down in that range, a regular prime or macro would be better. You can always also add in the focussing extension on the lens proper.

I believe I am getting smarter thanks to some good help.

These are some of the many options available on ebay. Many go in the $50-100 range, some have lenses or slide copiers included. Do any of them stand out as quality bellows?

Novoflex
Canon FL/FD - I assume it will take any Canon FL lens and there seems to be lots for a good price
Minolta Auto Bellows III - I assume a Minolta mount
Topcon - can be used as focus rail too - looks like a bayonet mount
Rodenstock for Pentax K - is this different from M42
Honeywell Pentax
Leica

What is req'd for adapters for some of the mounts that look like bayonet style (the seem to have a flip lever used as a catch)

Is there an advantage of one over another kind of mount?

These are the only two on your list that are easily adaptable to EF.

The Pentax is likely much cheaper, of course. And it should be quite usable.

I have a Canon FD bellows (the cheaper non-auto model) and it works well on my F-1 but will not easily adapt to EF without using an adaptor that has an optical element. I'd much rather use an M42 bellows with adapts with a $20 metal adaptor and provides more lens alternatives.

But I like the Pentacon bellows for medium format, because the mount opening is large enough so that I can mount virtually any piece of glass on it without interference. I know one fellow who bought an adjustible lens mount that looks like an aperture but is heavy enough to clamp around the threads of a barrel lens. He is into the old barrel lenses from 80 or 100 years ago, and this gives him a way to experiment with them easily. If you don't like the idea of a Pentacon body cap as a lens board, then get a Kiev lens reverser, which mounts in the same mount and provide male 62mm threads for the filter ring of an Arsat 80mm normal lens. Then, get a metal screw-on cap of the sort used to protect the male end of a stack of filters for storage, and bore a hole in it for mounting the macro lens of your choice. It's neater looking than a body cap, but it doesn't work any better.

If you get an M42 bellows, you are pretty much limited to M42 lenses. M42 can be adapted to other mounts well, but not many mounts can be adapted to M42 easily because it's small in diameter and has a long registration distance.

Rick "who would visit DVDTechnik to find out what adaptors are available before deciding" Denney

I have a bellows set-up, you can get some stuff pretty dang cheap on Ebay. Mines just a set of Asahi M42 bellows with an EOS adaptor on the rear with a Asahi super MC Takumar 50mm f1.4 lens. All manual so it's easy to adjust everything, it's a mono-rail bellows unit but I mount it on a Novoflex focusing rail so I can set the mag and the focus with the rail. Easy and dirt cheap.

Thanks for the help. I have definitely filled a few brain cells with knowledge. I will be looking for something with thr M42 mount as I have also been looking to get a couple manual Pentax lenses.

You actually don't need to get the FD-EOS adapter with optical element to mount the bellows. The optics are necessary to allow infinity focus, which, by definition, you don't need in this case. So one of the cheapie, air path, ones would do.