Would like to see a macro zoom lens

So buy a zoom lens & a bellows. Your field may not be super flat, but you can work around that.

There is no light loss, it is an apparent effect an illusion. What happens is that the effective aperture falls, so to keep the same exposure you need to open the diaphragm to get the same effective aperture. This is because the aperture is the ratio of the diameter of the stop and the distance it is from the film/sensor. This latter is usually of course the focal length or so close to it that it makes no difference. All in a perfect lens of infinite thin-ness but the idea is correct.

I'd also add that zooms are unpredictable on additional extension and of course don't zoom, they are merely variable focal length so the focus goes haywire as you zoom.

Yes, I'd like a macro zoom.  The Fuji 80-300 does get fairly close, as did the Nikon AF-G 70-200 f4 (indeed there were rumours of a macro zoom before it was released).

A zoom with an achromatic close up lens would be worth considering.

Jack Tingle wrote:

So buy a zoom lens & a bellows. Your field may not be super flat, but you can work around that.

It also won't be a zoom any more. As soon as you extend a zoom lens, it ceases to be parfocal. Turn the zoom collar and instantly lose focus, often by a huge amount.

EricShaltz wrote:

something like a 50-100 f/5.6 macro 1:1

Do you mean f/5.6 at 1:1, or an f/5.6 that ends up somewhere between f8 and f11 at 1:1? There's quite a difference.

In the latter case, you're ending up near the diffraction limited resolution of a high pixel-count digital camera, which means you'd be better off shooting with just a 50mm and cropping.

the use case is product photography in a studio with controlled lighting

What sort of "product", and what sort of "controlled lighting"?

I'd like to work with one of those lenses, but instead I need 3 lenses, 50, 70 and 100 macro.

feature Wishlist:

• internal zoom for lens-mounted lighting

In a studio?

• no aperture ring, it's not useful for studio

I've been doing studio work for decades, and have always found an aperture ring useful.

• tripod collar for balanced mounting

Agreed.

• weather sealing not required
• absolute position focus ring and clutch (like sony 90mm macro)
• some kind of mechanism on the focus ring to limit focus range to any point

I can picture this mechanism. No one is going to build it.

You are making a basic engineering/product design mistake. You have a problem that you have not stated, and have crafted an elaborate solution in your mind that you are now asking someone to implement. The problem with such a situation is that your situation typically ranges from non-optimal to totally impossible.

Can you describe the problem you're trying to solve, instead?

Woody S wrote:

Get an Olympus 100-400mm, it focuses to a bit over four feet as an 800mm FF equivalent. Naturally you'd need an Olympus camera to put it on.

And he'd also need to cut a hole in the wall into another room so he'd have the distance needed to shoot product with an 800 equivalent.

I assume EricShaltz specified 50-100mm because that's the perspective range he wanted, not 200-800mm equivalent.

And that he specified 1:1 because that's the smallest subject he needs to shoot, not the 0.29x of the Oly 100-400.

"so what's the point of having it be f/2.8?"

Makes focussing easier of course.

EricShaltz wrote:

The problem is I have 3 macro lenses 50, 70 and 100, I pick the one I want depending on the relative size of foreground and background I want, I'd like them to be one zoom lens.

Yeah, I gathered all that from the original post.

I feel like large aperture macro lenses aren't very useful because you can't get anything in focus at f/2.8 anyway,

And yet, somehow, I do.

so you're mostly using them at like f/8 or lower, so what's the point of having it be f/2.8?

Resolution. At f/8 you're bleeding out the resolution paid so much for with a 30, 40, 60mp camera.

When focus or DOF is a problem, you use focus stacking. I do a lot of work with a Zeiss 100mm f/2.0 Makro Planar.

controlled lighting as in my scene is always the same brightness, I always shoot at f/11, and with the lenses I have, that have relatively low light loss at macro ranges, I don't have to change any settings when I want to get a closer shot, most of the time. Where as a lens that has lots of light loss at macro range, I'd have to start changing settings whenever I want a closer shot, which is annoying.

Ah. Then I wonder what the focal lengths of your lenses actually are in the macro range. A "unit focusing" macro lens obeys the inverse square law. By the time you extend it to 1:1 you're down two stops. Floating element (internal focusing, rear focusing, etc) designs "zoom" the lens to a different focal length to reduce extension and aperture shrink, but you pay for this with shorter perspectives.

Joseph S Wisniewski wrote:

Jack Tingle wrote:

So buy a zoom lens & a bellows. Your field may not be super flat, but you can work around that.

It also won't be a zoom any more. As soon as you extend a zoom lens, it ceases to be parfocal. Turn the zoom collar and instantly lose focus, often by a huge amount.

Who says a zoom lens has to be parfocal? This is product photography in a studio, you've got time to refocus

The bigger problem will be that a bellows almost always involves a lot of extension and so you will be constrained to either a very close up arrangement or need to use a long focal length.  I'd be very surprised if many people find this a useful solution.

EricShaltz wrote:

something like a 50-100 f/5.6 macro 1:1

the use case is product photography in a studio with controlled lighting

I'd like to work with one of those lenses, but instead I need 3 lenses, 50, 70 and 100 macro.

feature Wishlist:

• internal zoom for lens-mounted lighting
• no aperture ring, it's not useful for studio
• tripod collar for balanced mounting
• weather sealing not required
• absolute position focus ring and clutch (like sony 90mm macro)
• some kind of mechanism on the focus ring to limit focus range to any point

You get everything but the focus ring or internal zoom with an adapted Canon MP-E65mm f/2.8 1x-5x. It's fixed focus at any given zoom setting so you achieve focus by moving the subject relative to the lens and camera, or vice-versa. That works fine in both studio and field settings.

There are (much) cheaper 3rd party equivalents available now, Sony mount too, but I'm happy with the MP-E and haven't looked at them - just aware they are there...

zoom lens with filters