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About the Canon MP-E 65

I have been holding this post off for some time, as I was hoping to create a series of shots that demonstrated some of the principles I will cover. Instead, I have decided to use photographs that I already have. In the future, I will likely do another post showing the depth of field at different apertures and exactly what I mean by diffraction.

As many of you know, the Canon MP-E 65 is my primary lens for macro. In fact, when I am not travelling, this is the lens I primarily use. At parties I will use the Canon 16-35 2.8L II and with my kids I’ll use the Canon 70-200 4.0L IS, but otherwise the MP-E 65 is the lens that will be on my camera. I moved to this lens after starting with the Canon 500D diopter on my Sigma 80-400. I quickly realized that I needed more magnification and the MP-E 65 was the lens that met my needs the best. I did a lot of research before purchasing it, but I have found out a lot more since buying it.

To start off with, I would never recommend purchasing this lens if you are not serious about macro photography. The following are the main reasons.

1. This is an extremely difficult lens to use and requires a lot of skill and practice. Your initial shots will be very disappointing.
2. You will need additional equipment in order to make the best use of this lens. I will go into more depth on this later.
3. Unlike all other macro lenses, this lens can only take macro shots. You cannot shoot portraits or anything else with this lens – just macro.

If you are willing to accept the above, then read on. First, I should explain my experience with this lens. I have owned it for a bit more than a year and I have taken several thousand shots with it. I also sells photographs professionally through microstock sites. This has meant that I have some different requirements than other macro photographers. Most of the shots taken with this lens that look awesome on Flickr would not be accepted by any stock agency. I will go into more why this is so shortly.

So what is the MP-E 65? Unlike practically every other macro lens that is limited to 1:1, the MP-E 65 allows you to fluidly move between 1x and 5x magnification. At 5x, a subject merely seven millimeters long will fill the entire frame. The lens is also incredibly sharp, providing you know its limitations. In tests that I have seen the MP-E 65 outperforms Canon’s venerated 100mm 2.8. This is one of the sharpest macro lenses you can own. Combined with the fact that this is the only macro lens I know of that can ‘zoom’ makes it a very interesting piece of optics.

Now comes for the tricky part. Using the MP-E 65 is unlike using any other lens you know of. First of all, there is no autofocus. In truth, autofocus is pretty useless in macro anyways. The vast majority of professional photographers use manual focus. The technique for doing this is to move the camera away so the subject is slightly blurry, then slowly move the camera forward until the subject is in focus. Then the process of focusing involves slowly moving the camera forward and backward in minute amounts. However, what may come as a surprise is the MP-E 65 has no focus at all. That’s right – it doesn’t even have manual focus! The only control you have is the magnification.

Another interesting detail is the optical effect of aperture. Many macro shots are typically shot at high apertures – f/11, f/16, f/22, or even sometimes f/32. First of all, the MP-E 65 cannot go beyond f/16, but in truth you will rarely use it. As the magnification increases, the effective aperture also changes. To calculate the effective aperture, you must use the following formula.

Effective aperture = (set aperture) * (magnification + 1)

So if you are shooting at 1x at f/2.8, the effective aperture will be f/5.6. If you are shooting at 5x at f/2.8, the effective aperture will be f/16.8. If you set the aperture to f/16 at 5x, the effective aperture is f/96! The immediate result you’ll notice is the viewfinder becomes very dark. Even a bright subject will be very hard to make out when shooting at 5x. The other corollary is you need a lot of light in order to get the shot. There are two ways you can supply this light.

1. Use a tripod and hold the shutter for an adequate amount of time. This works fine, as long as your subject doesn’t move.
2. Use a flash

I have chosen the second approach, which is basically a must because my subjects do move. However, you cannot use any flash with the MP-E 65. As with almost all macro work, the subject is too close to the lens for on camera flash or a hot shoe flash to work. In particular, you need bright lot and a lot of it aimed close to your subject. The two flashes that enable this are the Canon MR-14EX and the Canon MT-24EX. I own the second flash, which in my opinion should be offered in a package with the MP-E 65 because the lens is practically useless without it. This is the extra expense I mentioned above, as you now have to pair an $850 lens with a $650 flash – and neither one is useful for anything other than macro. The MT-24EX also solves another problem – the dark viewfinder. A button on the flash lights two small lamps on the flash that illuminate the subject for just enough time to focus and shoot. Annoyingly, the light goes out after a short period of time and after you take the shot. After months of using the lens, I found in the manual that you can set a custom function on the flash that allows you to trigger the lamps with the exposure (*) button on the camera. After learning about this, I cannot imagine how I managed to shoot before.

Another very interesting issue dealing with the MP-E 65 is diffraction. If you want the optical definition of diffraction, look here. However, the basic thing that you must understand is, with higher apertures and higher magnifications, you will lose quality in the picture. Basically you can only get so much detail the closer your subject gets to the lens. This becomes a big issue when trying to sell the picture. Typically, if you want to sell the picture, it must be sharp at full resolution. However, if you take a shot at 5x and f/16, in almost every situation the diffraction will be so severe that the photograph will be unsaleable. Here’s an example. The following picture will likely look fine on Flickr. It was taken at 5x and f/16.

Does the picture look sharp? Let’s see a full sized crop of the ball point.

Clearly the shot isn’t as sharp as first thought. You may also notice something else that I will discuss shortly. If you are happy with just showing small versions of your shots on Flickr, you can safely take shots at 5x and f/16. If you hope to sell these shots, then forget it. However, on the other hand you have the tiny depth of field to deal with. At 5x, and f/2.8 you have a DOF of .05mm. You can roughly double that by using a higher aperture. Perhaps the toughest issue I had when starting out with this lens is balancing these competing forces. If my aperture is too high at a high magnification, the shot will not be sharp. If I use a low aperture, the shot will be sharp but the depth of field will be tiny. I have found the following median works well for me.

1. When shooting at 1x, I will generally use f/11 unless I have a reason to open up more.
2. When shooting at 3x-5x, I will generally use f/8 unless I want the photo to be more abstract.
3. When shooting at 2x, I will use either f/8 or f/11 depending on the situation. If I feel I may quickly move to 3x then I’ll shoot at f/8. If I think I’ll stay at 1x or 2x, then I’ll use f/11.

Since moving to this approach, I rarely have shots rejected for lack of sharpness. To help make up for the low depth of field, I need to seriously think with each shot my angle in relation to the subject. Shooting the subject at an angle generally means that a good part of it will be out of focus, meaning I generally try to shoot with the camera perpendicular to the subject.

Now for another point that you may have noticed in the above crop. There’s a lot of dust in that crop! The above shot was one of the earliest shots I took with the MP-E 65, and it was rather embarrassing when a pro asked me what on earth was wrong with my camera! The simple fact is you might as well call the MP-E 65 the dust buster – it loves dust. Add on top the fact that it will show the tiniest spec of dust in ultimate details means that it’s nearly impossible to avoid getting dust in your shots. Perhaps the newer cameras with automatic dust removal will work better, though one of my coworkers who uses the MP-E 65 with the Canon 1D Mark III mentioned that it has not improved. I suspect that dust removal simply doesn’t get these miniscule specs – it just takes care of the larger ones that show up with normal lenses. To combat the dust, I regularly clean my sensor using Eclipse solution whenever the dust gets up to unacceptable levels. I am very careful when removing the lens from the camera, making sure to turn both off so the sensor is not electrically charged and I minimize the time the lens is off the camera. Still, I have to remove dust spots from every shot that I hope to submit – though thanks to my precautions this usually takes only a few minutes.

Perhaps the toughest thing to get used to is how to hold the lens still when photographing. Especially when you get to 5x, any tiny movement of the camera will be magnified tremendously in the picture. I combat this in several ways. First, I always shoot at 1/200 – which is the flash sync speed on the 5D. This helps keep the image sharp, but doesn’t prevent me from accidentally knocking the part of the image I want in focus from being in focus. To combat this, it helps that I spent some time learning to shoot a rifle as a kid, because the technique is similar. You simply must hold the lens steady. The MP-E 65 is not a very social lens. When taking pictures with this lens I focus intensely on the subject and I do not talk at all. Before I take the shot I will hold my breath to try to steady the camera.

Finally, I had a number of learning experiences dealing with the combination of the MT-24EX and the MP-E 65. The MT-24EX is a wonderful flash, but the light tends to be a bit harsh. The first lesson I learned was positioning the flashes in a way to try to minimize the light bouncing back into the camera. However, often when taking small subjects on the ground I need to position the flash heads so they don’t hit anything. In this case, I have less flexibility in not bouncing light back into the lens. To minimize this, I made use of two accessories. The first is a little known hood that Canon sells for the MP-E 65. It is quite unlike any other hood you have seen, but the nice thing is it screws directly onto the MT-24EX and is designed for this particular combination. The second accessory was a set of Sto-fen diffusers for the flash heads. Since I did this I have fewer problems with reflected light.

Other changes I have made have been to change the rations of the flash heads. I currently use 80-20, though I need to get better at switching this depending on which side I want to be stronger. The second approach is the change the strength of the flash to a stop or 2/3 of a stop lower depending on the subject I am shooting.

In summary, the MP-E 65 is one incredible lens, but it takes a lot of work to get it right.

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Tags: canon, macro, mp-e 65, mt-24ex, photography