Manfrotto X Benro…

Well, for this week, seems I won't be posting about images specifically, but I remembered that in one of my previous posts I've mentioned that I might put a review and a comparison between two macro rails that I have already, and probably it is time to do this review. So, this post might be short (I don't have the content planned already before typing the post so I can't quite tell the length of the post ahead).

Now before I go ahead with the review, I have to say that this item is discontinued already and I'm sure the web is full of reviews for such item, so this review is mainly about my impression since I did have a rail before this one. Since I've used 2 different types of macro-heads here, I thought I'd write something about it here.

Benro MP80

First of all, I guess I'd need to list my reasons for why did I think of buying a new macro-head since i do have one already. My reasons might be summarized in two main ones:

• The need to play with a new toy (for a change as I didn't get any new gear in a long time).
• The need for a more stable macro-head than my old Manfrotto MA 454.

 

Manfrotto MA 454

Now, the main thing that I didn't quite like in the Manfrotto head is the shaky movement of the rail and sometimes it's hard to judge the movement's distance from the scale on the side. Also, there is not much fine-tuning for the movement so one has to be quite picky when moving these knobs to move small distances in order of millimeters or less than that. I can't remember the price tag for this head really since I got it a long time ago (and ordered from outside). I have to say though, after using Benro MP80, I'm now quite aware that such a simple design for Manfrotto was for a reason, and I appreciate it.

Benro MP80

As for the Benro MP80, the matter was somewhat strange and perplexing even before buying the item. I've purchased this macro-head from a local store specialized in photography gear (and few units were left in the stock). The price tag was almost 20K.D. (around 65 USD). The head was apparently out of stock in many websites, but what I was surprised for is the price tag for such a head in other stores outside the country. Like this one here which offered a used one for almost 200 USD, which is like 3 times the price I had it for from the local store! Or like this store in the UK which offered it for £210, which is just a bit shy from being 4 times the price I got from the local store! There are even a number of websites that offered it for almost 300 USD. I've even found it in Alibaba which offered the price directly converted to K.D. and it was for 92 K.D.! It was such a strange thing to have it for 20 K.D. (and I'm not complaining really but it's just strange!).

Schematics of operating the head

Unlike the Manfrotto head, Benro's head has lot of knobs and it is also advertised as a "panorama" head in some websites. This is because of its circular base with scale for degrees of rotation as it can be seen from the picture above. As a panorama shooter myself, I know this is not enough but it is, let's say, fair. What I was thinking actually is that such rotating base can be used as a turning table of some sort to take pictures of products or to do my favorite "peeling" effect when needed, but I have my doubts about the usability of such feature in such task despite the easiness of rotating this circular base compared to the base of my old cranky and bulky panorama head base. Anyway, that's a story for another time and yet I have to test it.
As can be seen from the schematics, the head is quite flexible when it comes to movement and probably the most useful feature here (which Manfrotto miserably lack) is the lateral movement capability. Yet, things are not all sweet about this head.

Vexing Points:

Despite the lateral movement (which I do like, really) which would be quite beneficial for doing 3D anaglyphs work on macro level (or even in normal settings), yet there are issues that I couldn't digest well and made me think of it as lost money (but hey, still cheap compared to other places and I'm grateful for that). I'll try put things in points here:

1. The circular base is simply bulky and means that to work in macro, I can only place the camera horizontally, unlike the Manfrotto head which I could place on a ball-head or any other head to direct the camera in specific angle. It can be cumbersome indeed with the Manfrotto head, yet it gives a degree of flexibility. I'm aware that most macro rails (specially serious ones) do work that way, and just move the camera on a horizontal plane, but that definitely pushes one to work more on preparing the sample and to angle it in a proper way in front of the camera (and automatically, this means it is suitable only for indoors work only, mostly).
2. Benro's head here is supposed to take a load up to 12 kg (~26.5 lb) according to the websites I've fund, but with such heavy load on the moving plate, it becomes harder and harder to move the knobs (specially #3 in the schematic diagram above, which is responsible for moving the camera back- and frontward). I'm pretty sure when I worked with it, my camera and lens complex was around 1 kg (that is 1/12th of the announced load), give or take. Still, moving the camera frontward and backward was a hard and clunky, specially with such a small knob which comes under the camera body making it harder to hold with the fingers and rotate softly or precisely.
3. Because the plate that carries the camera is serrated at the bottom and moved by gears when rotating the knob, the movement becomes not so smooth specially with more heavy loads, so much that it felt as if the camera is passing over tiny bumps as it goes forward or backward. In Manfrotto's rail, the movement is done by a helical (screw-like) road at the center which pushes the camera forward or pull it backward.

Honestly, as for the second point, Manfrotto suffers from that as well somehow but it is such a big deal with Benro's macro-head here. In Manfrotto's macro rail, the rotating knob has a hexagonal opening which makes it suitable for placing some Allen key and use it to rotate slowly and probably more precisely (a bit), but none of that is available with the knobs on Benro's MP80 macro-head and one has to use the fingers solely to rotate it.

 

So far, I've gave out simple trials to shoot with Benro's head (some leaf as seen above at various magnification levels, using reverse lens and tubes). This leaves me with the rotating base to see how suitable it would be for shooting product (or rather peeling objects). It rotates smoothly, more than that of my old panorama head but maybe I would still need to put it on some kind of tripod to hold the base firmly as I rotate the head, and not put it simply on a table. Working on a table with such an item would be a plus for me specifically to use the light tent that I've received as a gift from a friend last year. The light tent (or box) solves a big deal of problems when it comes to the background for shooting such objects, so it would be a nice addition to work with a smooth rotating head inside that light box.

Finale

So, this is my humble experience with this head and a comparison to the previous macro rail from Manfrotto, which I had for years (and I guess I'll keep using). There are of course more advanced macro rails and heads, and some are even programmable for serious photographers who wish to do serious focus-stacking, but I think this is not for me as of yet. 

 

Meanwhile, I've already started strolling outside, since January, and been shooting around the neighborhood, trying to find new stuff around, mainly using my Sigma 12-24mm lens, and I have to say it is quite a challenge, specially when done with the normal camera and not the modified one, so to increase my chances for a creative juice flowing, I've decided to shoot bracketed most of the time and work with HDR images most of the time (i didn't work in HDR for a long time now). I allowed myself to go crazy a bit with tone-mapping, but that's a story for another time, hopefully as a post in here in the coming weeks, if time permits. 

 

I say as time permits here as my life had been suddenly busy with some blockade to ideas with the camera. Well, the blockade has been there already but it is more now, specifically with the absence of a maid to take care of many things around the house, which I find myself doing to help around. 

On the other hand, it is also February, the Retinitis Pigmentosa Awareness Month! Which means I have to get busy working on something for the month and to be posted on Instagram as well, and so far my head had been blank and out of ideas. There had been humble trials for brainstorming but nothing was yielded still. I just hope that I get the idea(s) clicking in as soon as possible.

For this reason, I'm thinking of maybe keeping out from blogging for some time, but I'm not sure about that. Anyway, I will leave it to time and I'll see to it in 2 weeks time for now. I'm also planning to put this review in Arabic for my Arabic blog, since I didn't post for months now (again, breaking my resolution of posting once a month at least). So this might take another toll on my time as well. 

Would all that "keeping busy" be just enough to keep my mind from wandering away and swirl into depression as usual? We'll see…

Stacked…

It's a slowing down time, and summer is hovering heavily with its beginning here. Air breezes are slow and barely enough to breathe here, with waves of dust suspended in the air. I miss winter already. I didn't do much photography lately but few video shooting, again, as I'm waiting to settle down with a topic for the project of the month of May. We'll see what that would be. I had some work with macro shooting too as I was trying my old rail to do some focus stacking, which I have to say from now, it was a fail for many factors. However, I got still some nice out come as well.

VaVaVoom...

Let's head first to the video. In my last post in this blog I've posted mainly 2 infrared videos done as I was driving. It was about time, however, to do the same while using my B+W 403 Black UV-Pass filter. I didn't want to use the old and cumbersome 18-55mm kit lens which fits this filter perfectly and I didn't have any wide angle lens better than my Voigtländer 20mm semi-manual lens, which has a diameter of 52mm, and thus a step-up ring is needed.

Without going into details here with the settings I've been using (basically automated), you might have noticed vignetting around the corners. I need to do a thorough check up and comparison with my other B+W 092 infrared filter and Voigtländer 20mm lens, as it seems that vignetting happens only with this lens, for which I use a step-up ring to fit those circular filters (all of them are 58mm in diameter while Voigtländer 20mm is 52mm). If vignetting appears with both filters then, of course, it has to be the step-up ring, but if not, then it has to be the filter itself and its nature and make. However, in regular single shots, fixing the vignetting is quite easy but with a video clip, I'm still not sure about my capabilities in that venue. 

Sigma 12-24mm for Canon.

I thought I was over with videos until I've noticed that some of the infrared images online are actually, and most likely, images taken with a converted camera but without any filter, which produced a strange hue of colors because of the full spectrum involved (specially when the sun is shining), and then colors would be converted (sometimes) and the resultant image is something "fantastical," so to say. This is what I planned to do then specially after acquiring a new lens (but an old one) from a friend who converted to Nikon. The lens is Sigma 12-24mm. It is a big and a bulky lens but the range of zooming here is quite useful for me specially for recording a video inside the car, and with the absence of any 18-55mm kit lens in my collection (it's there, but it's old and hardly used).

Again, sorry, I have to remove the audio here (for your own safety trust me). I was lucky and unlucky in the beginning of this video as you can see: I was trapped between my brother's car (which is red but turned blue with channel swapping) and our neighbor's car on the right, yet it was a good chance for some interesting footage! Anyhow, I think I'm going to like this new old-lens. There are some problems though which I'm hoping to find a solution for later:

Rokinon 800mm f/8.0 Mirror Lens

• The lens with its case is too large for my camera bag, even if the case is to be removed.
• The lens front is fisheye-like, meaning no filters can fit. But there is a special hood to cover the front of the lens and provide a base to attach filters, yet it can hardly be used for now since it's 82mm in diameter.
• The rear of the lens is large as well and it might be hard to stabilize any gel filters at the back.

Nevertheless, I still think this old lens will be of great use in the future. If only I can find a proper place to store it. This brings me memories of my Rokinon 800mm mirror lens which I didn't use much as well and I have to see about using this lens as well and getting active with it too! As you can see from the video above, the colors are pretty close to, for example, many portraiture shots that are said to be taken in infrared. This makes me think that many of these infrared shots are actually, simply, taken with a converted camera without an infrared filter. I've seen some pretty colored infrared shots that are said to be taken with Hoya infrared filters, with threshold of 720nm; Yet, I don't understand the vibrant colors which I don't even get with my B+W 092 infrared filter of 650nm in threshold. This needs more research!

Minute

Min-Yoot; to be precise about the pronunciation. Along with my videos, I've taken my chances to work with my old macro-rail for a while, as some tiny plants are blooming at home and I didn't want to lose this "rare" chance without documenting some of them. Got to say that the aroma that spread around the place in the early morning hours is just refreshing (despite the bad weather of dust and humidity sometimes).

Beauty Explosion
Canon EF 50mm + 56mm ET, f/11, 10^-1sec, ISO250.
Focus Stack

I have to say though that all my trials with the rail were a chain of failures. Yet, some people liked some shots despite the errors like Beauty Explosion, which was shot indoors (after moving the pot inside). Yet, I made a mistake for not using higher f-number. Despite being inside, the branch was still shaking because of the slight breeze from the AC! This was so obvious even with 1.12X magnification, so I can't imagine what kind of shake I would be witnessing if I went over this ratio of magnification even! The 20mm and 36mm extension tubes would be used for every railing experiment still. It can be noticed in Beauty Explosion how some areas are smudges; those are specifically some merging errors probably cause of the little shake of the branch and changing the position and also there might be some missing millimeters along the way as I was rotating the knobs of the rail (making more than 20 shots along the way). The colors here are, of course, a result of swapping Red and Blue (the shoot was done using my converted Canon EOS 7D but without any filters).

SpectraOnion
Canon EF 50mm + 12mm ET, f/22, 30^-1sec, ISO100.

Away from that plant, outside under the blazing sun, I got some memories back of me doing some of my first 3D with onion blooms, and we have it again! I didn't want to skip the chance so I tried my luck with it, this time with my converted camera. In SpectraOnion, I've the 12mm extension tube just to get closer to the bloom, as the 50mm lens has a minimum focusing distance of 45cm, and I needed to get closer than this distance. My aim wasn't really going into the field of macro here, yet I got a nice close up, despite the back-breaking situation (very low) and the blazing sun. Of course,  I didn't forget to aim for a 3D rendition so I've taken several shots by nudging the whole tripod to the left gently.

SpectraOnion (3D)

I've examined doing the 3D anaglyph on both, colored and B&W versions and, despite the distractions with the colored version, it seems that it stands out more than the B&W version. Not sure why, but it is kind of weird to see such thing with my own eyes, because it is believed, typically, that B&W images are better for anaglyph rendering to reduce the color distractions in general! Anyway, it looks fine to me specially at the base of the little stems as they stand out when viewed with anaglyph glasses. Moreover, I had a go with swapping the channels as usual with such images specifically.

SpectraOnion (Red-Blue channel swap)

Being beautiful as well, but not favored over the original by some, probably because the original has a strong color contrast between yellows and blues (the two are opposites on the circle of colors). However, another trial took place and this time I've done it outside (for the same plant) in a somewhat quite evening with barely some breeze. The light outside was strong so I was relying a bit on the fast shutter to stabilize the image with the same settings for the previous experiment: 50mm lens and 20+36mm tubes.

Stacked Bloom
Canon EF 50mm + 56mm ET, f/22, 5^-1sec, ISO400.

As it can be seen, I was wrong. Though I increased the depth to f/22 but the shutter slowed down significantly. For this reason, I had to time my shooting, holding the remote in one hand and trying to block the air current with the other, and shooting only when I feel the branch was stable enough. The ISO had to be raised significantly which meant more noise. However, I can say that the range of proper merging here is better than my first trial despite the fact that I was doing it outside in the fresh air. Here in Stacked Bloom we see that it's all blue after channel swapping unlike the very first trial, Beauty Explosion. This is probably related to the change in IR levels from indoors to outdoors (outdoors being more, naturally).

Crystal Bloom
Canon EF 50mm + 56mm ET, f/16, 10sec, ISO100.

In my final trial, Crystal Bloom, I've decided to cut a portion of the branch and it take it inside then stabilize it further by holding it with a paper binder. The length was small so AC air breeze wouldn't have an effect on it, which encouraged me to go mad with the exposure! At that moment I've remembered my problems with my Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 macro lens, and thus decided to work with f/16 instead of f/22, as I thought it might be a factor playing in the mishaps with merging the focus stack. In average, the exposure for each shot in the stack was between 8 seconds to 10 seconds and the total was about 40 shots. Tried to be precise as much as possible with the rail this time and moved 1mm between each shot and the other. However, in merging the focus stack, things went OK except at some portions close to the edges away from the center of the image. This leads to me think that what is happening here is a change in the virtual size of the image beside the change in the focused area, and for this reason the stacking doesn't go well. There is, of course, some room for human error, always. Also, it might just be that using many extension tubes like that doesn't go well with the rail method? Not sure. Too bad I didn't think of doing reversing lens back then since I have the proper gear for that. According to calculations (which I hope are right!) if I'm to use Voigtländer 20mm lens in reverse, the magnification power is supposed to be about 2.5X. The question remains though about how practical the focusing distance would be (it is REALLY close already with extension tubes and 50mm at 1.12X magnification!). Seems we'll have another round with that. I didn't forget as well to render a 3D out of these images!

Crystal Bloom (3D)

Finale

This was a... brief (?) about what was going on with my life lately. Excluding the ups and downs and the mood swings. There was a bubble of eagerness to write a poem with all that mix of feelings inside me, yet I couldn't find the power nor the mental order to pin it down. I think my dreams of seeing Morocco must be kept for some other time. I've signed in for a leave for the whole month of Ramadhan and it will start by May 28^th and will end by June 22^nd. Thus, I'm not sure if there is any chance for a vacation this year either. All what is left for me here, I presume, is the company of my own thoughts, and projects…