How much did you pay for your lens Precarious?
Let me clear a few things up...
I only got this new lens less than a week ago! Everything up to now was shot using the Canon Telephoto EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro Lens (
$499), which only goes down to 1:1 (1x, actual size). I used add-on magnifying diopter filters and sometimes 65mm of extension tubes to go closer than 1:1. That's when things start to take on distortion and light dispersion.
The new lens is the Canon MP-E 65mm (
$886). It goes all the way down to 5x and remains crystal clear! However, it is only worth using for 2x and beyond, because it only goes as high as 16f (very shallow depth of field), whereas the 100mm goes up to 32f. I just checked using a calculator and that is double the f! :wacko: And you lose the sharp edges if you go above 10f on the MP-E, while I generally shoot at 22f with the 100mm (i.e. more of the bug in focus).
So hellz yeah, MP-E 65mm is the schiznits! But all it does for me is make my images 2x or closer more crisp. Like these. They would have been less crisp with my other setup because I'd have to use diopters and extension tubes to get this close. (Even still, I had to stack 2 images to get decent depth of field.) But I still use the 100mm for anything 1x or bigger, because it has better depth of field and because the MP-E only goes up to 1x. In other words, the MP-E is ONLY good for macro and then only macro 2x or beyond.
Hope that makes sense even to non-photographers.
I'd also like to thank everyone who bought bugs from me over the last year because that's what allows me to buy photography gear. That paid for the MP-E 65mm. I'm unemployed and couldn't do it otherwise so
THANK YOU! If I get good hatches from the Orchid ooths I may make enough to upgrade the camera body for even higher resolution images! It's win-win because you all get new pets AND nicer photos to look at.
Here are some super closeups using the old gear. Expect ever better ones with the new lens...
