Reversed mounting a Zeiss Mikrotar 45/4.5 lens on Olympus EPL-2

[zhang xk]

Hello everyone,

I bought this lens long time ago as part of a microscope parts lot, but never used it as it was designed for microscope large format photography. I also DIY a lens mount with helical for using microscope objectives as photograpy lenses on my OM EPL-2 as I have many low power 2,5x-4x microscope lenses. These are tiny and light so that they are easy to carry around.

Today I tried using this Mikrotar 45/4.5 lens reversed mounted as a macro lens, and the result is quite good.😀

First, here is the lens and DIY mount and a LTM- M3/4 mount adaptor ring. I may try my other objectives later. This Mikrotar can focus from about 30 cm to infinate so it peforms like a real macro lens.

Zhang

 

[zhang xk]

Here is an image of a coin shot with this lens at about 20 cm with additioanl m39 ring.

A resized full image and a % crop.

 

[Benjamin Marks]

Pix taken with the lens? Intrigued. . .

 

[zhang xk]

Another image. Only resized and no PS. My DIY mount was from a junk Jupiter-8 so it has a very fine focus for accurate focusing.



Thanks for viewing.

 

[zhang xk]

Pix taken with the lens? Intrigued. . .

Yep. I have other low power microscope objectives that can also take pictures on my epl-2. The good point is you can travel light.

 

[zhang xk]

Some of my low power microscope objectives. Size comparison with a compact Industar-10 50/3.5.

 

[zhang xk]

A coin doesn't seem to have fine enough details to demonstrate the resolving power of this lens, so I take a watch and openned it for a movement shot. I also take out my Canon FD 50/3.5 macro lens for a similar shot at about the same distance.

The first two images are of Mikrotar, full frame and 100% crop, both are un-PSed.
The next two are shot with Canon FD 50/3.5 at F8. Unfortunately, the movement was moved upside-down, but you can get a rough idea how good is this 3 element lens performs in its undesigned way.😀 It appears even sharper than a true macro lens of good reputation IMHO.

 

[zhang xk]

Here is an image I found on-line that tells you the resolving power of these kind of microscope lenses. It appears they are approching theoretical limits.