Ultra Micro Nikkor 165mm f4

[Toby]

I managed to find one of these guys in excellent shape, with the front conversion element, and was lucky enough to get a Nikon F adapter for it from Michio. It is crazy sharp. Here are a few pix I did with it. Luckily it is optimized for 1:20 (or 1:40 with the front element), so it seems to work well at longer than normal macro distances. The water drop falling into the Japanese fountain was a lucky shot (obviously), but what is amazing is that this is about a 4-5x crop, just so you can gauge how sharp the lens really is.

[Akira]

The water drop shots are all breathtaking...  Thank you for sharing!

[pluton]

Great shots, with an interesting rendering from the lens.

[Toby]

Here's one more that I like, as long as we are doing water. Magnified the images from this lens are a revelation, and these are all shot wide open.

[arthurking83]

the solitary water drop image is amazing!

But the water splash(crown shaped splash) shot, looks to have a slight amount of aperture set. You can just see the aperture blade pattern in the blur circles, whereas the last falling water drop image shows a fully wide, open round edged blur circle shape

[Toby]

Right you are! I must have turned it slightly by accident while handholding.

[timh]

The water drop shots are all breathtaking...  Thank you for sharing!

+1

The flower shots are great too!

[bobfriedman]

nice water shots.. cool.

[Macro_Cosmos]

I really like the bokeh orbs, nice pics!
I've seen this lens pop up periodically on ebay asking for ridiculous prices.

[Toby]

I made a casual bid on this one for $1700 and actually won it. It's quite a piece of work--huge. At first I thought it was a bit bland, but seeing the incredible sharpness and precision of the images made me realize that there really is something to these lenses.

[Macro_Cosmos]

I made a casual bid on this one for $1700 and actually won it. It's quite a piece of work--huge. At first I thought it was a bit bland, but seeing the incredible sharpness and precision of the images made me realize that there really is something to these lenses.

$1700? Whilst being a ridiculous price, it's not at all bad! You can easily flip it for $2500+, or just keep it. There's natural fluorite inside 

[Toby]

And the glass is perfect. There is a small amount of wear on the barrel, but not bad at all and it also comes with the front conversion element and I got a lovely custom made adapter to F mount from Michio too. I had originally thought of possibly reselling it, as I am most enamored of lenses with strange bokeh, but seeing the results, the absolute sharpness and clarity and lack of distortion, made me realize that it is really a gem. I have not even tried it except at f4. And the fact that it is optimized for 1:20 or 1:40 makes it quite useful in general photography too.