Home made stand off ring

A stand off extension ring is a ring for attachment to the filter threads of a lens, and allows for mounting something further away from the lens. It has the same diameter threads on the outside as on the inside.

This kind of ring has many uses. One can be to offset an attachment to the Panasonic Lumix 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens. Mounting a step up ring to the Lumix 20mm is not advisable, since it will cause the lens to jam when powering down. The front lens assembly is withdrawn into the chassis when powering down, which will cause anything wider than a normal filter to jam. But using a stand off ring between the lens and step up ring solves this problem.

Stand off rings are uncommon, and can even be pretty expensive. What's far more common and inexpensive, though, are UV protection filters. These can be bought from various auction sites at a small cost. You can remove the glass from these, and what remains is a stand off ring.

Here is an example UV protection filter:

Let's break the glass off it:

Be sure to use eye protection, and gloves. I used gloves then breaking the glass, but not in this illustration photo. Note that I put the ring into a plastic cup, to avoid having the shattered glass flying all over.

Breaking the glass takes a surprising amount of force. The round shape of the glass makes it extra strong. This is the reason why airplane windows are rounded: A rectangular shape is much weaker, especially in the corners. Hitting the glass towards one side may be an easier way to break it.

Once broken, remove the shattered remains:


It turns out that the glass was held in place with a threaded locking ring. Unscrewing this ring would have released the glass, without having to break it! Anyway, this was a cheap filter, so no harm done.

What I have now is a stand off ring, used to mount front lens accessories at an offset from the lens.

Here is an application of a stand off extension ring. A 52mm screw in hood is attached to the Lumix 20mm f/1.7 Pancake lens. As the lens has 46mm front filter threads, a step up ring is needed. However, connecting a step up ring directly to the lens is a bad idea due to the jamming risk discussed above. Using a stand off ring between them solves this problem.

Of course, attaching all this stuff to the moving front assembly of the lens is not a good idea. If you want a hood, it is better to use a light, low profile one.

Using older flash units

People who have previously used another camera system may have an old flash unit lying around. Chances are that you can still use them with your new Micro Four Thirds system.

Using a spare flash unit, rather than the built in on board flash, has many advantages. First of all, the dedicated flash unit usually has significantly more power, and can be used from a larger distance.

There is also the effect of having the flash further away from the lens, which means that you are less likely to get pictures with red eyes, and also makes the shadows somewhat nicer. Last, but not least, the external flash units can often be tilted, so that you can bounce the light off a white ceiling or wall. This will usually give much better lightning when taking pictures of people, as the light comes from a larger area, i.e., the ceiling or wall, and not from a single source.

Here are a couple of old flash units. Let's see how they can be used on the Panasonic Lumix GH1.

To the left is the Metz Mecablitz 36C-2, and to the right is the Nikon Speedlight SB-22s.

The Metz flash unit only has one connecting pin, and hence can only be triggered by the camera. No other communication is possible. The Nikon flash unit, on the other hand, has some more pins, and is capable of autofocus assist light and TTL. However, as this is a rather old flash, these functions can not be used on newer Nikon cameras, and certainly not on Micro Four Thirds cameras.

What can still be used, though, is the auto-function. The auto-function is a bit like TTL, except that the flash measures the light coming back from the subject, and cuts off the light when the exposure is sufficient. In TTL mode, the camera measures the amount of light coming back from the subject Through The Lens (TTL), and shuts off the flash at the correct exposure.

Since there is no communication between the flash and the camera, the flash does not know the ISO and aperture settings on the camera. So you need to give the flash directions manually. The picture shows the Metz flash rear panel, set in auto mode:
In this case, the ISO sensitivity is set to 100, the zoom is set to 85mm, which corresponds to 42mm on Micro Four Thirds. With this setting, the aperture can be set to f/8 (yellow), f/4 (green) or f/2 (red auto mode). Adjusting the ISO slider will give other aperture possibilities.

On the rear panel, you can also see that in this setting, with f/4, ISO 100 and 85mm zoom, the maximum range of the flash is approximately eight meters.

When using the flash in bounce mode, i.e., bouncing the light off a white surface, you generally want to have a wide angle flash zoom, and the effective range becomes smaller.

As for the Nikon flash, the rear panel settings are quite similar:
Again I have selected ISO 100, and with the selected auto mode, the usable aperture is f/2.8. The mode selector can be adjusted, to yield f/4, f/5.6 and f/8 as well, albeit with lower maximum distance as the aperture gets smaller.

Here is the Nikon flash in use, on Panasonic Lumix GH1:
The settings are: ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/160 second, manual exposure mode (M). The lens is the Panasonic Lumix G 45-200mm f/4-5.6 set at 45mm zoom.

I used this combination to take this picture, bouncing the flash off the white ceiling:
This picture showing the Pentax K10D camera with the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens, is not very interesting, but the exposure is good. Also, notice that the shadows are soft, due to bouncing the flash light off the white ceiling.

If you use this flash setup, and notice that the images consistently get too dark, then select a slightly larger aperture on the camera, as compared with what the flash rear panel says. And vice versa if the images consistently get too light.

Flash units can be used like this for virtually any camera, of course, as long as you can manually control the ISO, aperture and shutter. You will usually want to set the shutter fairly fast, e.g., 1/60 second, when using an external flash. This is to get a good balance of ambient and flash light in the picture. Normally, you will also need to set the white balance to "flash", to avoid the wrong colour balance.

Warning

Some older flash guns use a high voltage trigger, and could potentially damage the circuitry of the camera. Here is a list to check before using your old flash.

Cheap and simple macro soft box

When taking macro pictures, or pictures of fairly small objects in general, a common problem is to get the lightning right. More even lightning can be achieved by using a "soft box", essentially a contraption that spreads light from one (or a few) light sources over a larger area.

A very cheap and simple soft box is a transparent bucket, like this one:

Preferably, it should have as neutral density as possible. If it has some colour tint, the images will get the wrong white balance. It is of course possible to adjust the white balance later, especially if you're using RAW images, but it is better to have as correct colours as possible from the start.

When photographing the object, place it inside the bucket, with the light source on one side, or from the closed end, like this:

In this case, I used a Panasonic Lumix GH1, with an Olympus 50mm f/2 macro lens. This combination can only be focused manually, which is no problem for macro use.

The light source is simply the sun light coming from the window on the top side of the image. One could also have used a flash pointing towards the side of the bucket, however, an off camera TTL flash would have been preferable, which is probably not so common for people to have for this system.

Here is an example picture, taken with (left) and without (right) the softbox. As you can see, the softbox image has softer contrasts. Besides, the picture taken without the softbox has reflections from the window. The right image also has some shadows next too the feet, which you may need to edit out later.

I used ISO 100, f/5.6 for both images. The shutter speed was 1/3.2 second for the left image, and 1/5 second for the right image, since the softbox steals some light.

Here is another example image, showing a Pelikan M425 piston filler fountain pen. I used f/13 to achieve enough depth of field.

Future use of MFT lenses

One of the fun things with the Micro Four Thirds (MFT) format, is the short flange distance (20mm), which enables the possibility of making adapters for a number of formats. There are cheap, abundant adapters for many legacy formats, e.g., Nikon F and Pentax K, to name a few.

When MFT becomes legacy

However, the flip side of the coin is that some day, inevitably, MFT is also going to become a legacy format. What happens with your gorgeous, and expensive, MFT lenses then?

Let's say that the worst case scenario is that, due to competition, the MFT system loses so much volume that it is abandoned by Olympus and Panasonic. It doesn't seem likely now, but stranger things have happened.

You can still use your old cameras and lenses, of course, but at some point you will want a newer camera, due to new features and better image quality. Can you still use your MFT lenses on some camera from another system?

If Samsung NX becomes dominating

The Samsung NX format is one of the competitors in the mirrorless system category. Let's say this format becomes dominating. Can you use your old MFT lenses on this format through an adapter?

In short: No. It's not possible. The Samsung NX format has a longer flange distance (25.50mm), meaning that even if you made a very short adapter, the MFT lenses would not be able to focus to infinity. You could only use them as short focus macro lenses. Which is not very useful.

If Sony E becomes dominating

The Sony E format was introduced for their new NEX series. It has a flange distance which is 2mm shorter than the MFT format. This is good news, because 2mm, while pretty short, is probably enough to make an adapter for using MFT lenses on Sony E. The Sony E format also has a wider flange diameter, which makes it easier to design an adapter.

However, the MFT lenses are pretty useless without the possibility to operate the focus and the aperture. And both are operated electronically, controlled by the camera. So an adapter must have the relevant software to interpret the Sony E signals, and translate them into something that the MFT lenses understand.

This kind of electronic communication might sound easy, however, it is probably far from trivial. And at best, your autofocus would probably be very poor, both the speed, and, possibly, also the accuracy.

For a comparison, let's consider the Canon EF system. There are adapters for using Canon EF lenses on MFT cameras, but none of them can control the aperture or the focus. So the probability of getting future adapters that provide this feature for MFT lenses seems pretty slim, given that there are many magnitudes more Canon EF lenses out there than MFT lenses.

Conclusion

The conclusion is that if the MFT system is abandoned, your lenses are more or less useless.

On the other hand, there are some rumors now that the modular Ricoh GXR system will include a Micro Four Thirds mount/sensor module. If launched, this will enable mounting a MFT lens to the Ricoh GXR camera, with an adapter mount/sensor module.

Update December 2010

Since I wrote this article, an adapter for using MFT lenses on Sony E cameras (NEX) has actually emerged.  However, since it has no electronic contact, it can not control neither the focus nor the aperture.  So you're stuck with a focus around infinity, and the max aperture.  You can, however, use it with the Cosina Nokton 25mm f/0.95, which is a completely manual lens, with a mechanical focus ring, and a mechanical aperture ring.

Example video capture, GH1+Lumix 20mm

Here is an example video recorded without using a tripod, using the Panasonic Lumix GH1, and the Lumix 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens.



And a larger version of the same video:



As you can see in the video, the focus is hunting a bit back and forth. This could be due to selecting spot autofocus and the smallest focus area. Perhaps it would have been more calm using multi area focus.

Also, in this case I am using the camera firmware v1.2. The new firmware v1.3 available on May 10th, 2010 is said to improve autofocus performance during video recording, and may have solved this focus hunt problem.

When using video mode on the GH1, the camera will focus continuously, even if the focus selector is set in AFS. According to my knowledge, there is no mode that allows for autofocus when starting the recording, but keeps the focus constant when filming. I think this is a drawback with the camera. It is of course possible to select AFS, pre-focus, and then set MF before starting the video recording. But this is a somewhat awkward procedure.

The recording was done with the AVCHD format, at 720p and 50fps. My version of the camera is PAL, hence I am not able to record in 60fps. I used HandBrake to convert the stream to H.264, which is better suited for uploading.

The image is also a bit jerky, but I can only blame myself for not keeping the camera stable.

The video was recorded in Gamla Stan, Stockholm, Sweden. The musicians are singing "Dina ögon är som knivar", a Vladimir Vysotskij song translated to Swedish. The band is called Carl Oscar Nygrens kalas och nöjesorkester.

"Home made" hood for the Lumix 20mm f/1.7 pancake

The Panasonic Lumix 20mm f/1.7 pancake is a brilliant lens, but it does not come with a lens hood. Flare is not a big issue with this lens, but a lens hood is still good for protecting the front element. Some people use UV protection filters for the same effect, however, adding another glass layer will reduce the image quality to some degree.

One option is to get a cheap third party hood designed for the Leica Summilux lens, to screw into the front 46mm filter thread. However, this hood adds some bulk to the lens, making it less compact. The compactness is one of the desirable features of the Lumix 20mm pancake in the first place.

In an attempt to find a low profile hood that looks more like the hood for the Pentax 40mm f/2.8 pancake lens, I bought a cheap 46mm to 37mm step down ring. The ring is essentially a short cylinder with 46mm threads on the outside, and 37mm threads on the inside.

The ring is made out of light metal, and is extruded on the rear side to save some weight:


Step up and step down rings should be used with care with the Lumix 20mm pancake. When powering down, the lens retracts the front assembly slightly into the chassis, which will jam and possibly damage the focus mechanism if you attach a ring which is too wide. The following picture shows that this step down ring is not too wide, and can be safely used with the Lumix 20mm pancake lens:


Looking at hoods, you will note that they are usually ribbed and matte on the inside. This is to avoid having light reflected into the lens. Since the inside of the step down ring is threaded, it already has the right shape. However, the metal is still a bit shiny. To make it more matte, I applied some matte black enamel paint on the inside threads. Wanting to retain the stealthy look of the lens, I also painted the front and the side of the ring:


Here is the lens with the "home made" hood attached. This hood does not cause any additional vignetting.


You will probably want to have a front lens cap as well, and you can get a 37mm cap which fits into the front threads of the step down ring. Both the step down ring and the front lens cap can be found on various auction sites.

Lumix G 45-200mm f/4-5.6

The Panasonic Lumix G 45-200mm f/4-5.6 Mega O.I.S. is the value tele zoom from Panasonic. While not exactly cheap, it does provide a good value for money, with a maximum of 400mm tele (35mm film camera equivalent), an excess of 4x zoom, and optical image stabilization.

The picture below shows the lens at 45mm (left), and extended at 200mm.

Attaching a Nikon F AIS lens to Lumix GH1

Nikon F AIS lenses, with an aperture ring, are easy to use on Micro Four Thirds cameras. Adapters are cheap and easy to get. Attaching and removing the adapter and lens is shown in this video, using a Panasonic Lumix GH1 as an example:



The lens shown in this example is a compact Nikon 50mm f/1.8 AIS. It can easily be used for macro photography as well, when using macro extension rings.

Register distance

The register distance, also referred to as the flange focal distance, is the distance between the lens mount, and the film plane. Modern cameras don't use film anymore, so the film plane is in fact the sensor plane.

SLR cameras, with a moving reflex mirror behind the lens mount, need a fairly long register distance. The reason why Micro Four Thirds cameras can be made more compact than SLR cameras, is that they don't need the reflex mirror, and can have a shorter register distance.

A lens mount with a short register distance can be considered a universal mount, since it is possible to create adapters for mounts with longer distance. Micro Four Thirds is such a mount. There are adapters for a number of different formats, e.g., Nikon F and Pentax K.

For comparison, here is the register distance of various formats:

Samsung NX Mini	Very short
Pentax Q	9.20mm
Nikon 1	17.00mm
C mount	17.526mm
Fujifilm X	17.70mm
Sony E (NEX)	18.00mm
Sony FZ	19.00mm
Leica L (T and SL)	19.00mm
Micro Four Thirds	19.25mm
Hasselblad XCD	20.00mm
Samsung NX	25.50mm
Fujifilm G	26.70mm
Leica M	27.80mm
Konica Hexar RF	28.00mm
Olympus Pen F	28.95mm
Contax G	29.00mm
Contax RF	34.85mm
Four Thirds	38.67mm
Konica AR	40.70mm
Canon FD	42.00mm
Minolta MD	43.72mm
Sigma SA	44.00mm
Canon EF	44.00mm
Minolta AF/Sony Alpha	44.00mm
Pentax K	45.46mm
M42 screw	45.46mm
Contax/Yashica	45.50mm
Olympus OM	46.00mm
Nikon F	46.50mm
Leica R	47.00mm
Contax N	47.00mm
Arri PL	52.00mm
Oct-19	61.00mm
Mamiya 645	63.30mm
Pentax 645	70.87mm
Hasselblad 500	74.90mm
Pentax 6x7	84.95mm

The new Samsung mirrorless NX format has a longer register distance than Micro Four Thirds. However, the Samung format still has a shorter distance than most relevant formats, e.g., Leica M, so that it is possible to create adapters just as easily as for Micro Four Thirds.

On the other hand, the Samsung NX has a register distance about 2mm shorter than Leica M, which may be why Novoflex has not yet announced an adapter for it. 2mm may be too short to make a quality adapter.