Quote:
Originally Posted by Leif
So, who's first for a review then? I will wait a little while before posting impressions.
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Sorry not to have given my impressions before but have been rather busy of late. Today I had my first go with the 154 and it does just what I hoped it would. I have it mounted on a Manfrotto 405 head (which I bought to take to Australia to carry the driven mount for astrophotography) and so have fine control of the angle of the camera and now with the 154 backwards and forwards movement as well. There is slight backlash but it did not cause me a problem. To test it I have used a 200mm lens with 1.4TC and a reversed old 50mm lens on the front which I believe will give a real magnification of 5.6x
My subject is ordinary table salt. At the same time I thought I would have a go of the CZM program to improve the depth of field and as the adjustments would have to be very fine, make a good test of the 154. The camera was set at an angle of approx 45 degrees and I took six pictures with the point of focus at different depths in the field of view.
I am certainly pleased with the 154, the control was perfectly adequate in this situation. It has a large range of movement (120mm) and conveniently two places to adjust the movement in case one for example ends up in an awkward place. There is also a locking screw as well as a lever that releases the whole plate so that very rough positioning can be quickly obtained. The instructions warn you to be carefull using that with a camera mounted as the camera, if not supported, could suddenly move under its own weight and get damaged.
As far as the CZM is concerned six pictures wasn't enough in this case and there are a few obvious errors in the stacking especially on the right and double images near the bottom. Even from this quick trial a reasonable image can be obtained by cropping those bits out.
The first picture is one of the frames and the second is the 6 stacked.
I hope this helps.
Dave