the dreaded Raynox 505

oneofone25 wrote:

When I first purchased the Raynox 505 and used it on my Panasonic FZ1000, and FZ2500, I was unhappy with the results. Everything seemed unsharp and only the very center 5-10% of the images seemed usable. The Raynox 250 was the much better choice for what I was using.

I soon switched in late 1999 to the Olympus EM1 Mark 2 camera and bought the Olympus 60mm macro lens. My main focus has always been macro photography, so I purchased a few Kenko extension tubes to get the most out of my macro lens. I was told that if I wanted to do anything over 5x magnification, I would need to get a microscope objective to get anything usable image-wise.

I wasn't out to prove anyone wrong, but I didn't have the funds at the time to do a Mitutoyu setup (or any other objectives) with tube lens and an automated rail when I was first starting out.

My first setup with objectives was when I was 16, on an old M42 film camera (not even a name brand, a Vivitar 220, which was just one of many labels slapped on a Cosina) with two full stacks of M42 extension tubes that I got from a junk box at a local camera store, back in the days when they used to toss all sorts of oddities into the junk box. They were maybe $5 a set, and each set was 3 tubes about 50mm total. So 45mm for the camera itself, 100mm for 6 tubes, and the rear half of a broken lens with all the elements missing that the camera shop just gave me became my RMS adapter, and viola, a "proper" 160mm tube for a finite objective. I flocked the tubes at school (seriously, the woodshop had a "flocking gun" that pumped "lint" at a glue covered surface). Broken 2 axis junky focusing rail, I stripped off one axis and I was all set for objectives.

High school used to give me a certain amount of broken stuff in exchange for me fixing other broken stuff, which is how I acquired a 4x and 10x objective.

I decided to purchase the MC-20 teleconverter as I was convinced it would work with the 60mm macro lens by attaching extension tubes. I took two 10mm extension tubes by Kenko and attached them to the teleconverter and this allowed me to attach the MC-20 to the 60mm macro lens, giving me 2.5x magnification just using this setup. However, adding the Raynox 250 gave me near 6x magnification with full ability to focus bracket up to 999 images if needed.

One day I decided I would see if the Raynox 505 would work. I took a cheaper 16mm Pixco brand extension tube which has an inner wall made of plastic. I whittled away about 1mm of the inner wall of the tube which allowed the teleconverter lens to fit inside. I did this as the two 10mm tubes created a bit of a void between the teleconverter lens and the 60mm macro lens, and I wanted to avoid that if posssible. Using 16mm brought the two lenses closer together which gathered more light and made things sharper.

Adding the Raynox 505 brought me a field of view of 1.8mm - about 9x magnification, with the full ability to focus bracket images. This also made sure to use the very very center of the Raynox 505, bring me sharpness to approximately 40-50% of the image, rather than the initial 5-10%. I could see why people weren't big on the Raynox 505 on the usual macro setup...but with a lens setup already at 2.4x magnification, adding the Raynox 505 gave acceptable results as long as I was cropping about 1/2 of the image away.

This is how I got involved with photographing grains of sand, scales on butterflies and bugs, and other things at around 9x magnification.

Experiments are a big part of the fun of macro. My apologies to master Yoda, but there is a "try" after all.

What's the first law of engineering?

Never laugh at anything that works. My first high mag macro, many many years ago, was taken by literally duct-taping a reversed lens as an infinity objective (before that was even a thing in microscopy) in front of a short telephoto (a "tube lens"). I believe it was a 35mm and a 135mm, which would have been about 4x. Yeah, I didn't have budget to cover coupling rings. Which you couldn't buy at the time, because coupled lenses wasn't a "thing" yet.

Then I took two filters from the $1 filter box at my local camera store, removed the glass, and attached them face to face with a wrap of cloth tape and epoxy. It was much more reliable than duct tape. Still looked janky,

Never laugh at anything that works.

Oh, and 40mm working distance at 4x is nothing to sneeze at.

With the sand grains, I have since attempted to use a Mitutoyu 10x objective with rail and tube lens and cannot get good results with that setup, no matter what lighting I use.

What are you using for a tube lens?

If it's reasonably flat field and works with other objectives when you have it at its actual focal length from the sensor so it's truly infinity, it should work with any well corrected lens.That generally means something like a $500 Thor Labs, unfortunately. I've had some luck with a 200mm f/4 micro-Nikkor (which is surprisingly civilized at infinity) but that's not a cheap solution, either.

As soon as you start screwing with distances and setting the tube lens at something other than its focal length, you're playing a guessing game of matching the objective's aberrations at some arbitrary distance other than infinity with the tube lens's similar aberrations. I've seen sites with whole tables of that stuff. I'll pass. You can also play those same games with finite objectives.

Here are a few examples of some shots with the 505 and my MC-20/60mm macro setup. Most are stacks of about 125-175 images as that seems to be the sweet spot. The setup has its flaws and isn't perfect....but provides me with good enough results to the point where I am happy and my followers on my Facebook page and Instagram pages are thrilled with the results. I do use the Raynox 202 many times when I need not as much magnification but better sharpness all-around. The Raynox 250 is great out in the field. The 202/505 setup is usually indoors.

First, the shoulder and back of the head of a nectar-drinking mosquito I found in late 2020.

Focused on only the pedipalps of a tiny jumping spider, getting some great detail of the individual hairs on them

The surface of a fly's eye - about 1mm field of view

the scales on a Polythemus moth - 0.75mm field of view

tiny purple moth eggs, just 0.6mm each

the area on a female jumping spider for fertilization

a 0.25mm sand garnet balanced on another grain of sand, both from Bandon, Oregon

a 0.2mm sand garnet balanced on another grain of sand, both from Bandon, Oregon

a 0.25mm sand garnet balanced on another grain of sand, both from Bandon, Oregon