I’m new in film scanning and film photography in general. My setup is JJC kit (Nikon ES-2 clone), Pentax-M 50mm f/1.7, extention tubes and Sony A6000 APS-C camera.
I’m happy with results in terms of sharpness and details, however I faced with heavy vignetting. By experimenting, I found out that the problem was in the extention tubes. So it looks like I have to exclude tubes from the system.
I’m concidering buying Sigma 105mm F/2.8 EX Macro or Tamron SP AF 90mm F/2.8 Di Macro lenses, so I can use one of them with my film Pentax for portraits. But I’m not sure how to calculad if I can use it with my kit.
The max distance from the film to the lens filter flange my kit can provide is only 16cm. Sigma and Tarmon declare min. focus distances as 31.3cm and 29 cm for 1:1 magnification. For APS-C’s 1:1.5 it has to be even bigger.
Does it mean that it is impossible to use my kit with them?
Hello Pavel, welcome to the forum. I’m being a little pedantic but the problem with the Pentax lens is that it isn’t designed for high magnifications, it’s not a macro lens. The extension tube simply allows you to find that out.
As far as the 90mm and 105mm lenses go, if you think about the crop factor of 1.5 for APS-C they act like 135 mm and 157.5 mm focal length lenses so impractically long really even if you had enough tubes to go between the lens and your film holder. You should really be thinking of lenses in the 50mm to 60mm focal length range and there are plenty of macro contenders there. The 55mm f2.8 Micro-Nikkor would be very good and probably not too expensive, you’d need a short 12mm extension tube but unlike the Pentax lens it is designed to have one. There are others from the film era, or modern ones from Laowa and Sigma. Worth searching this forum for recommendations.
Hello Harry, thanks for your answer.
There are 55/3,5 Micro Nikkor PC Auto non-Ai and Sigma 50mm f2.8 Macro 1:1 PK selling in my town. Should I try one of them, or would a 40 mm TTArtisan be better?
There is a Facebook forum called “Digitizing film with a digital camera” and I think it’s fair to say that there is a lot more information about the performance of individual lenses on there. I only have the 55mm f2.8 Micro-Nikkor but I have seen clear evidence on there that the f2.8 version is better for copying 35mm. I don’t know about the TTArtisans 40mm I’m afraid but you could try searching on here or the other forum (searching on FB forums is pretty primitive though).