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The Poor Man's 608mm APSC Superzoom

Started 7 months ago | Discussions
OP jackwelch Senior Member • Posts: 1,086
Re: The Poor Man's 608mm APSC Superzoom

Larry Rexley wrote:

jackwelch wrote:

55mm (88mm equiv)

200mm (320mm equiv)

200mm (320 equiv) + 1.9x Olympux C210 TC

Very interesting results. Thanks for taking the time and effort to post your results and experiences. Results are very encouraging, and are better that I would have expected.

There are basically no teleconverter options for the EF-M native lenses. I've tried mounting small and short vintage MC4 (Vivitar 4-element) 2x TC optics to a native EF-M 10mm extension tube, and was successful in part, but with any EF-M lens it would not focus to infinity, the flange distance for EF-M seems to be too short to allow a TC. and infinity focus.

I have had no issue with focusing with the Olympus TC, it works very well, just only downside is you can see some noticeable dark vignetting throughout the whole picture.

I have a lot of experience using DxO Photolab 5 with vintage lenses, and with existing lenses with modified teleconverters. If DxO doesn't have the profile for a lens or for a lens + teleconverter combo, I've gotten good at adjusting sharpness, CA, vignetting etc to compensate for the lens characteristics, producing results very much like the lenses DxO does have profiles for.

DxO's unsharp masking has the ability to do a custom adjustment for edge and corner sharpness, independent of center sharpness. It's the 'Edge Offset' setting and it acts like a second unsharp mask intensity setting that does not affect center sharpness but progressively sharpens the image to the edges and corners, with maximum effect in the corners. Using that setting you can usually achieve uniform sharpness across the frame with most lenses. For vintage lenses or soft TC's I use radius of 0.91 - 1.8 depending on the lens, intensity between 100-250 (depends on the lens) and edge offset can be as much as 100-225 over the 'original' intensity if the lens is soft in the corners.

DxO's CA settings are also very effective for vintage lenses and TCs. Maxing out the CA settings and applying purple fringing would likely get rid of most or all of the CA in the above images.

Thank you for the detailed write up on this, for the time being I don't use any PP software, everything is straight out of camera, but it's good to know what is possible.

Your instructions will make anyone's life easier if they do need to edit their pictures.

I'm curious what kind of results you could get with DxO Photolab, or other PP software, with the TC combo in this post, shooting RAW.

Maybe as Maxmolly7 suggested I can post some RAW samples here for you or anyone to experiment on?

I'll take some shots later today.

KEG
KEG Veteran Member • Posts: 4,908
Re: The Poor Man's 608mm APSC Superzoom

jackwelch wrote:

For the longest time I've wanted an APSC but just could not cave in due to prices and then I saw this deal. $400 for an M3 and twin bundle lens (the 18-55 and 55-200mm) and with 1 year cannon warranty on the lenses. The M3 though is still under review for warranty registration and I hope it passes.

First thing out of the box I'm impress how small this M3 is. Pictures really don't do it justice, it's much smaller then expected. Slap one of those pancake lenses on it and I think you'll have something that rivals a Ricoh GR III in size.

I've had the G3X before this and I knew what to expect, performs exactly like the G3X and I believe it's just a slight faster than the G3X actually when it comes to autofocus.

M3 is much nicer cam than most people want to admit but wait until you get either of the M6es.

There's some buttons that are quite hard to press though like the playback button I notice I really got to press it hard to get any response - but that's a small matter.

And at the longest end it's only 320mm FF equivalent which is really short for my liking.

I've contemplated getting a 70-300mm, 100-400mm or 150-600mm lens but this will undeniably set me back another $470-$1200 but for a hobby I just can't justify spending that much for the time being.

In comes the Olympus C-210 which I got for $10 and adds a 1.9x tele conversion lens to the whole set up. The combination works well and so does autofocus. Since the lens and TC both have a 52mm filter thread, there's no need of any step down/up rings.

I'll post some sample pictures later but for the time being here's the set up.

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KEG

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Psxpetey Forum Member • Posts: 83
Re: The Poor Man's 608mm APSC Superzoom

Isn’t 200x1.9 380 how’d your get 608

Maxmolly7
Maxmolly7 Senior Member • Posts: 1,480
Re: The Poor Man's 608mm APSC Superzoom

Psxpetey wrote:

Isn’t 200x1.9 380 how’d your get 608

You missed the x1.6 factor from the APS-C sensor.

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May THE LIGHT be with you!

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OP jackwelch Senior Member • Posts: 1,086
Re: The Poor Man's 608mm APSC Superzoom
1

Psxpetey wrote:

Isn’t 200x1.9 380 how’d your get 608

I use full frame equivalent here.

200mm ef-m lens = 320mm FF equivalent.

So 320mm x 1.9 = 608mm

Psxpetey Forum Member • Posts: 83
Re: The Poor Man's 608mm APSC Superzoom

That’s a eos m native lens mwaning it’s native 200 on apsc

that only true on full frame lenses adapted without a speed booster

KEG
KEG Veteran Member • Posts: 4,908
Re: The Poor Man's 608mm APSC Superzoom

Psxpetey wrote:

That’s a eos m native lens mwaning it’s native 200 on apsc

that only true on full frame lenses adapted without a speed booster

Eh, no

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KEG

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ChrisPCrunch Regular Member • Posts: 145
Re: The Poor Man's 608mm APSC Superzoom

jackwelch wrote:

Maxmolly7 wrote:

Thank you for the variety of samples.

It gives me a better practical idea. I was thinking about adding a converter to me setup too, but now I am not so sure because of the extra srew-in step.
May be too much hassle for me?

I also struggle a little bit with the results of your 55-200mm without converter, these also don't look really sharp to me. May be because of slow shutterspeed and high ISO? Are they OOC without sharpening?

Not too hassle, it screws in fast and well.

These are all straight out of camera and without any editing.

I don't think the not sharp part is due to camera or TC here, probably more to my non existent photographic skills.

If you check out some of the pics, for example the excavator pic, the bottle in that pic next to the man actually has more details in the TC version of the picture.

That is because the focal plane is different between the two images. If you look at the non TC version, the traffic light in front of the excavator is noticeably sharper than the TC version. It looks like in the non-TC version the camera has focused closer than with  the TC version.

Chris

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Psxpetey Forum Member • Posts: 83
Re: The Poor Man's 608mm APSC Superzoom

uh ya bozo

OP jackwelch Senior Member • Posts: 1,086
Re: The Poor Man's 608mm APSC Superzoom

ChrisPCrunch wrote:

That is because the focal plane is different between the two images. If you look at the non TC version, the traffic light in front of the excavator is noticeably sharper than the TC version. It looks like in the non-TC version the camera has focused closer than with the TC version.

Chris

You’re absolutely right, I forgot to consider area of focus here. Actually I am using box focus and the focus is in the middle center.

I think one of these days I’ll find a signboard with text and shoot it far distance. To really gauge whether a TC adds any real value or not.

today was cloudy and seemed like going to rain, so I couldn’t go out and take any shots.

KEG
KEG Veteran Member • Posts: 4,908
Re: The Poor Man's 608mm APSC Superzoom

Psxpetey wrote:

uh ya bozo

200 mm on 55-200 gives the same angle of view as 200 mm on 70-200 fullframe lens on crop camera.

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KEG

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