Macro Photography for Beginners: Bellows.

Using a bellows unit (now we`re starting to talk dollars!) provides a longer extension than tubes and has the advantage that you can smoothly change the image size in a wide range just by turning a knob and then repositioning the setup with another knob to refocus. Very convenient to use.
Some bellows again lose contact with the lens so you have to operate the focus and aperture manually. More expensive versions will have electrical contact with the lens for full control. Auto focus is a pain when doing macro work as it tends to get in the way by focussing on the wrong part of your subject, always use manual focus for macro, and focus by moving the whole camera-lens combination to and fro or by moving the subject, if that`s more convenient.

All the lens reversing stuff also applies here and is really appropriate to use it as the bellows provides quite powerful magnification when extended and the lens employed will work better in reverse. Again, any brand lens can be used in reverse and a clever thing to do is use an enlarger lens with a custom adapter. Buy the normal T-mount adapter for the bellows fitting then get a friendly machine shop to make a simple adapter to screw the enlarger lens into and then pop into the T-mount adapter. Enlarger lenses are designed to work close up and will provide excellent results. About 90mm to 150mm would be the best focal length range to try.

Shorter focal length primes work better and true macro lenses are preferred when using a bellows unit. My favourite lens on the bellows is the Nikon 55mm f/2.8 manual focus macro.

I have only had experience with the Nikon bellows and know that the latest version (PB-6) has a front plate that can be turned around to provide a lens reversing adapter already built-in. The earlier version that I own (PB-4) does not have that and you need to buy the reversing adapter to plug in the front of the bellows. The advantage of the older PB-4 bellows is that the front frame that holds the lens has sideways shift and tilt, plus the camera body can be rotated 90 degrees so some depth of field manipulation and distortion correction can be applied.

Upside. Great magnification, smooth and easy to adjust image size.
Downside. High cost, may also need to buy reversing adapter, best used with a lens designed for extreme close-ups, ie a true macro lens or enlarging lens with a custom made adapter. Cumbersome to use at times.

More on bellows....
The other day I chanced on some little toadstools about 3/8" high in my garden, getting the macro lens close enough was a problem as I needed to use the 55mm macro lens reversed and the bellows extended a little to get enough size in the frame. The bottom of the bellows kept hitting the ground or the wood where I wanted to shoot from. A bit of lateral, or more like inverted, thinking and the problem was solved. A couple of bits of scrap aluminium and an hour or so in the workshop and I made a bracket that attaches to the 3D tripod head and holds the bellows upside down. That way the front of the lens can get closer and lower to get a better view.

The SB-28 flash has a Lumiquest softbox on it and had to be that close to get enough illumination, it was used in a more pointing straight down fashion, it`s just left to flop in this photo. The washed out overexposed "L" shape is the aluminium bracket I made to do the job. The bellows base can be twisted on the overhead bracket to allow the camera viewfinder to be accessable. Probably the bellows set at 45 to 90 degrees to the top bit of channel extrusion makes use and viewing for focus easier. You may need a little mirror to see the camera settings on the body LCD. If you twist the camera body through 90 degrees for a portrait shot then the camera settings are visible.
The tangle of black cord above is the remote release cable for the N8008s, it always tends to tangle like that, so it`s a very natural photo.
The whole top device is now very heavy and tends to overbalance so a bag of rocks should be added to a tripod leg or two to hold it steady.
The Rolls-Royce version may have an adjustable arm on it to hold the flash(es) in correct position, more experiments to be done yet to see how best to make it.

And the result of getting in close with the above arrangement...

The top section shows the pair and the bottom the junior one. They have been cropped a bit from the original 4"x6" prints to save bandwidth. Bear in mind the diameter of the top of the big toadstool is under 4mm and the total height maybe 10mm. The actual shots look much better than these compressed versions.

Used my N8008s Nikon in manual mode at 1/60 sec with the old PB-4 bellows and a Nikon manual focus 55mm f/2.8 macro lens mounted in reverse using the BR-2A ring. Focused at f/2.8 then shut down to f/22 (as shown on the aperture ring). SB-28 flash on TTL with softbox attached held about three inches above the toadstools, tried it about five inches away and got underexposure indication but the negative looks OK. Also for some shots I used a diffuser made from a large plastic milk bottle, that white diffused plastic probably worked better then the expensive Lumiquest softbox.