Going Past 5x
Recently I pondered a bit how to break the 5x barrier in terms of macro magnification. While my MP-E 65 provides magnification up to 5x, of course I had to wonder about progressing beyond this. I read a bit about using bellows, reversing lenses, and other techniques, but all of them seemed rather a pain. For instance, bellows really aren’t practical when photographing out in the field.
It then occurred to me that the answer was quite obvious. First, by switching to my 7D instead of my 5D2 I reached an effective magnification (compared to my 5D2) of 8x. Second, I was curious if my 1.4x extender would work with the MP-E 65 – so I fit it on to give me an effective magnification of 11x. I decided to ignore the inevitable diffraction and try it out.
After trying it out on the carpet, I decided to find a real subject so I went outside with my contraption. I quickly found a fly that was temporarily willing to be a still subject – or at least up to 3x when it flew away.
I quickly noticed a number of things about the combo. For one thing, while hand shooting at 5x is a challenge, when it comes to 11x things take quite a different turn. Not only is it incredibly difficult getting something to stay still in the viewfinder, but the viewfinder is even darker than usual. For the first time in awhile I was forced to use the lamps on my MT-24EX just to focus. While normally the viewfinder is dark at higher magnifications, I can see barely enough to be able to focus. This wasn’t the case here. Also, I noticed that the image on the viewfinder itself looked much ‘noisier’. This was a bit of a surprise and took getting used to. I’m not sure if it is an effect of the 7D or the 1.4x extender, but the viewfinder quality was definitely worse.
After playing around with the fly I decided to look for a smaller subject. Aphids on our rose bushes have always proven a challenge. While they keep relatively still, they are quite small.
For comparison sake, here is an aphid taken at 5x with the 5D2 on the same day.
And here’s a different aphid – even smaller than this one on a different leaf at 11x.
While I was very pleased with the result, there are obvious drawbacks. FIrst, image quality suffers – which one would expect. I am honestly not sure how much of this was due to the increased diffraction inherent in the small sensor of the 7D and how much was caused by the 1.4x extender. I will have to try the extender some time on the 5D2 to get a better idea.
Diffraction, at least, can be combated. For instance I can take multiple shots at a lower aperture and focus stack them. I may try this some time with this combo to see what type of quality I can get, but on this particular day I did not have much time.
While I will not go through the lengths to post the 100% crops here (this is not a review blog) I did compare the crops from the 5D2 and the 7D/1.4x combo and it looks like they are roughly equivalent. In other words, about the same detail is visible from a 5D2 image at 5x blown up to the equivalent size compared to the 7D + 1.4x. Still, at first sight the 7D + 1.4x certainly looks more impressive!
Related posts:
- Playing around with dandelion seeds Dandelions have always been one of my favorite subjects – in particular the seeds as they fall. Sure, they’re weeds – but they’re graceful weeds. This particular image is a focus stack from two images. I have been working a bit more with focus stacking using Zerene stacker and find...
Tags: lens, macro, magnification, mp-e 65