Needing some advice on what I need for macro shots.....

FiggeB wrote:

I might be mistaken, but I suspect that the the Nikon PK12 lacks any kind of electrical contacts. The only ”automatic” in the PK12 is a mechanical aperture coupling? A very old Nikon design? Will it work with G lenses? Check the Q&A in the link you refer to.

I checked my collection of old Nikon gear, reversing rings, conversion rings etc, but could not find any PK12.

They're relatively rare. PK-12 is a "closeup adapter" for the Nikon short telephotos. It's only 14mm, and if memory serves that's the focus throw of the original 85mm f1.4, so it picks up where that lens's own helicoid lets off.

I've been known to use the shorter Kenko tube (I believe 12mm) and 77mm Canon 500D with my 85mm f/1.4, That gets you into a really nice range for shallow DOF butterflies and flowers (if you know how to stalk butterflies in the cool morning where they're slow).

I used to frequently use a predecessor of the PK-12, the Nikon E6 (no dash) to boost the camera a few extra mm from the rear standard of the PB-4 bellows. Otherwise, you couldn't use the rotating rear standard with a Nikon D3 (or D2X).

By far the most common Nikon extension tube was the PK-13, the 26.5mm tube that was a "match" for the various 55mm Micro-Nikkors. Those had 26.5mm helicoids that got them to 1:2, so the 26.5mm tube took you to 1:1.

The only problem was that when Nikon went from the f/3.5 design to the f/2.8, they added their first floating group for a macro, which meant that the optical design of the lens would be "wrong" at extended distances. Fortunately, the effect wasn't that strong. It just meant that you basically couldn't count on the 55mm f/2.8's flat field and near zero distortion beyond 1:2, so no copy work. Still a dang fine lens for flowers, bugs, and watches.

In my young and stupid days, I dismantled a 55mm f/2.8, added a helicoid between the two groups and a near round "iris" (I think a 13 blade) and made a superb bellows lens. I should do that again: I have a 55mm f/2.8 with a frozen focusing helicoid, and the CLA is actually a worse procedure than my recreation.

As stated by BobORama, some lenses due to their optical design do not play well with extension tubes.

Yep. Oddly enough, it was common for one of those lenses (the 55mm f2.8 I mentioned earlier) to be bundled with one. Thanks, Nikon.

If you want to go beyond 1:1 it it probably better to use corrected closeup filters.

Almost never.

Remember the first rule: stronger lens dominates the system.

Even a good achromat is just a two or three element lens. If you let it dominate, you lose all the compensations and corrections of a more complex lens. For example, a 70-200mm lens is 5 diopters at the long end (1000mm/200mm). If you put a good 5 diopter closeup lens on one (say a Marumi DHG 200) you've made a 1:1 macro (5D + 5D = 10D. 1000mm/10D = 100mm, at 200mm infinity focus it's 1:1) but you've also made a Frankenstein monster where a simple 2-element lens is contributing equally to the whole system.

There's a reason Nikon only made their achromat closeup lenses in 1.5D and 2.9D and Canon only made theirs in 2D and 4D.  No one really wants beautiful, sophisticated lenses dominated by strong two-element "magnifying glasses".

Even the aftermarket doesn't go beyond 5D (Marumi and NiSi) and 8D (Raynox). Raynox only goes that high because their closeup lenses are designed for the shorter lenses on P&S cameras and a 8D can't dominate when your "telephoto" setting is still 20D.

The ultimate closeup filter is of course a proper lens.

You mean like a Laowa 2:1 or 2x-5x, or a Leitz Photar, Zeiss Luminar, Macro (not "Micro") Nikkor, or a reversed enlarger lens, of course. Something actually designed for high magnification. A 50mm f2.8 Leitz Photar on a Nikon PB-4 bellows is generally my weapon of choice.

Or a reversed micro-Nikkor on a bellows.

Or, the current darling of the low-cost, high-quality macro field, a reversed, finite microscope objective, like the AmScope 4x plan achro with a 160mm tube length or the Nikon CF plan achro (or was it Apo?) at a 210mm tube length.

This leads to use of stacked lenses, which is a subject in itself.

Indeed, and one I'm not quite sure you understand, if you're talking about a stacked lens as "the ultimate closeup lens". Although that may be more an issue of "terminology" than "knowledge".

Remember that rule "stronger lens dominates". When you stack lenses, the front lens (the "objective lens", in current microscopy parlance) has near total domination of the image quality. The rear lens (the "relay lens" or "tube lens" in current microscope parlance) is just sort of "along for the ride. It has one simple job, grab an image projected at infinity and focus it on a sensor typically 100mm (10D) to 200mm (5D) away, with 200mm being the most common "tube lens", by far, because microscopes).

The front lens has the harder job: to grab a subject at roughly 5mm to 40mm from the front element and turn it into an ray bundle focused at infinity. The front lenses are typically something in the 50mm (20D) to 20mm (50D) range for a reversed prime, or 50mm (20D), 40mm (25D), 20mm (50D), 10mm (100D) for 4x, 5x, 10x, and 20x "infinity" microscope objectives, respectively.

Since the front lens is so much stronger than the rear lens, it's the dominant lens, and you can get by with a very simple rear lens, a three or four element achromat. You can actually buy a compact, inexpensive tube lens of exceptional quality like the four-element Carman Haas Laser "clone" of the venerable ITL200 (a lens built for Thor Labs by Nikon's industrial division) for around $180. The Raynox DCR-150, a high quality 3-element lens marketed as a "closeup lens" for $70 turns out to be more useful in the rear as a "tube lens" than it is up front.

These days, "the ultimate" is a Mitutoyo 5x "infinity" objective (around $600 used on the bay) and an ITL200 (around $400 for the Thor Labs original, $180 for the Carman Hass knockoff.