Novoflex Castel-L focus rail

I just ordered one of these for $179 USD from B&H.

Their price is $100 less than the current price on Amazon.

grsnovi wrote:

I just ordered one of these for $179 USD from B&H.

Their price is $100 less than the current price on Amazon.

Yes, B&H is indeed dumping them for $100 off right now. Just the version with the Novoflex "quick release of death", not the one with the sideways Arca clamp, though. That one is still $279.

My Castle-L disappointed me almost from the start. These days, I use a couple of NiSi rails for most of my work, and only bring out the Novoflex when I need one more rail for something.

Here's some things to watch out for.

1. Like many Novoflex products, there are bearing blocks of some hydroscopic plastic in the mechanism. Those swell and contract with changes in humidity and temperature, so it can jam solid on warm, humid days, and get so loose it wobbles on dry days. There are two tiny Allen screws on the side of the slider with the locking knob that will let you compensate for this.
2. The Novoflex round quick release can spontaneously loosen enough to let a camera spin freely. This is dangerous as heck. I ended up drilling four holes in mine, tapping them, and screwing in pins, so they could lock into holes I'd drilled in an ARCA clamp.
3. The lock knob can be spun until it falls out. It can do this all by itself in a camera bag. That happened to me at a botanical conservatory one time.
4. It's 15 mm/turn of the knob. That's a bit too imprecise for focus stacking if you're going for magnifications 2x or higher.

My primary rail is the NiSi NM-180. They can frequently be found on sale for $129. The NM-180 is the current darling of the macro scene. You'll see them in Allen Walls's videos among other places. The NiSi

1. Has an Arca clamp that can be unlocked and rotated 90 degrees, but won't come loose spontaneously.
2. Moves 1.25mm/turn instead of 15. That's a good range for higher magnification work. Has a crank on one knob to help you make long adjustments pretty quickly.
3. Although the locking knob can be removed like the Novoflex, this rail has a fine-pitched lead-screw and will stay put without the locking knob, even when vertically oriented. (I think it only has a locking knob in the first place because some of its rack-and-pinion competitors like Novoflex do).
4. Has 160mm range of motion, as opposed to 140mm for the Novoflex.
5. Has a distance scale that's much clearer and easier to read than the Novoflex.
6. Doesn't lock up on humid days. I believe the track adjustment is metal, although it has a two screw adjustment system like the Novoflex, I've never needed to adjust it.

NiSi also has the slightly more expensive NM-200 with a 180mm adjustment range, and a release mechanism so you can pull the lever, slide the carriage smoothly to anywhere on the rail, and release it to lock it back onto the headscrew. Unfortunately, it's $200 and never seems to go on sale.

I also have a Haoge FM-160. That's a dirt-cheap ($70) rail which has a 4mm/turn leadscrew, a non-rotating Arca clamp (that, unfortunately, is sideways so it can't work with my 200mm f/4 Nikon.

Note: about drilling holes...

I've drilled and tapped holes in the Novoflex Castle L and the Novoflex Magic Ball head. A long time ago, I wanted to make an anti-twist Arca plate for my Nikon PB-4 bellows. The PB-4 has one standard 1/4-20 tapped hole in the center, and 8 untapped 6mm holes around it in an octagon, each hole being 20mm from the center. So I drilled 4 holes in my Arca plate, tapped them, and added Allen screws with 5.6mm heads. The amount of torque needed to sheer that would be enormous.

Later, when I got the Novoflex stuff, I noticed that both the Castle L and the Magic Ball can let loose with catastrophic suddenness. I added the same pattern of Allen screws to them, and made some Arca clamps with the same holes as the PB-4. I jokingly call this the "X-20" standard, 4 holes in an X with 20mm arms. 4 holes in an X means I can remove and replace the Arca clamps 90 rotated 90 degrees.

Sounds like a lot of bother, and it is, but it's really the only way I've seen to make the Novoflex stuff safe to use.

Joseph, thanks for that!

I had watched a video yesterday (Michael Erlewine) who seemed to think that this model Novoflex was "better" than the Castel-Q? In any case mine will arrive tomorrow and we'll give it a go.

Do you do "most" of your macro shooting in the field? I'm guessing the issues you mention might be easier to mitigate in the studio rather than in the field.

15mm per turn does seem like an awful lot, thanks for the info on the other rails. This is my first rail so perhaps I was seduced by the $100 discount. I guess we'll see how I do.

grsnovi wrote:

Joseph, thanks for that!

You're quite welcome.

Knowledge was meant to be shared.

I had watched a video yesterday (Michael Erlewine) who seemed to think that this model Novoflex was "better" than the Castel-Q?

Well, they're both the same base, just with a different slider. Personally, I dislike them both. The proprietary round quick release on the L can come loose suddenly, and it's wasteful mounting an Arca quick release clamp on a Novoflex quick release disc, in order to use the bulk of my gear.

And the Q is annoying to me, like all rails with integrated 90 degree Arca clamps, because one of my most frequently used lenses is the Nikon 200mm f/4 micro-Nikkor, which has an integrated tripod foot. Arca plates for lenses like that go fore and aft, not sideways, like the long camera plates and Hel-L brackets popularized by RRS.

Really, the NiSi works best for me.

In any case mine will arrive tomorrow and we'll give it a go.

Do let us know how you get along with it.

Do you do "most" of your macro shooting in the field?

It's a pretty even mix.

I'm guessing the issues you mention might be easier to mitigate in the studio rather than in the field.

The studio does tend to be a little more consistent in terms of temperature and humidity.

15mm per turn does seem like an awful lot, thanks for the info on the other rails. This is my first rail so perhaps I was seduced by the $100 discount. I guess we'll see how I do.

Indeed.

The best of luck to you.

...but I haven't used it yet.

Feels solid and the stage moves smoothly. I'm anxious to give it a work-out.

grsnovi wrote:

...but I haven't used it yet.

Feels solid and the stage moves smoothly.

Excellent. (Have you just absently ran the rail back and forth? These things always seem to invite that)

I'm anxious to give it a work-out.

Looking forward to seeing some pics.

I have a Novoflex rail and an Exakta fit bellows dating from the 1960s. The rail is still useful and works well. The bellows is good and reliable, but nowadays it needs an adapter at both ends.

These older Novoflex models do seem to turn up quite often on eBay.

I think their current products are over-complex, and they are certainly expensive.

Don Cox

Joseph S Wisniewski wrote:

Looking forward to seeing some pics.

First set of shots with Novoflex. 18 image stack of unedited raws in Affinity Photo v2.0. Didn't think about what would happen trying to stack the second hand and its impact on the minute hand, so quick and dirty edits to replace the entire second sweep.

I enjoyed walking the focus highlight up the image as I turned the stage knob manually. I have wondered that moving a focused camera would alter the perspective of each image however I guess to a degree the stacking/merge s/w makes adjustments to accommodate that.

grsnovi wrote:

Joseph S Wisniewski wrote:

Looking forward to seeing some pics.

First set of shots with Novoflex. 18 image stack of unedited raws in Affinity Photo v2.0.

A good first effort. Things will just keep getting better.

Didn't think about what would happen trying to stack the second hand and its impact on the minute hand, so quick and dirty edits to replace the entire second sweep.

Did you know that the standard in the industry is to stop watches and clocks and set them to 10:10? Apparently, there's some old research that says that this produces a "smile" and makes the watch more appealing.

It goes back to what I keep repeating "every photo is a portrait".

I enjoyed walking the focus highlight up the image as I turned the stage knob manually. I have wondered that moving a focused camera would alter the perspective of each image however I guess to a degree the stacking/merge s/w makes adjustments to accommodate that.

As long as your focus movements are small enough, focus stacking does typically compensate for your perspective shifts. The resultant perspective is "orthographic", like the image was shot from far away with a very long lens. One problem is that anything out of focus in all shots in the stack may get selected from random layers and end up producing strange background "swirls" or "fringing" around in-focus details.

At low magnification, you can also use a bellows and focus by moving the rear standard, a technique known as "bellows draw", and that eliminates perspective shifts that cause fringing. It does cause magnification shifts that make framing a little more difficult.

I did know about the 10:10 setting (as I've been looking at watch adverts for 20 years) but I never thought about stopping the second hand.

Usually I'll process the raws before running the resulting jpg's through the focus stack.

Also, I made no effort to capture multiple lighting scenarios to allow for an optimum finished result (I recently watched a couple of YT's on obtaining "professional" watch photographs).

I was pretty happy watching the focus peaking move as I adjusted the Novoflex.

The manual shots I took lapsed over two and a half minutes, so the second hand virtually disappeared and the minute hand moved. Here is the crop from the original stack before I edited this out with a cut/paste.