Playing with the 1-5x Macro

Part of me doesn't want to share this photo, because it isn't very good, but at the same time I want to be honest about learning new things.  Last week I finally got out my 65mm 1-5x macro to try to start figuring it out, especially now that I have my focusing rails.  I new using manual focus would be difficult and that there would be a lot less light getting in that close, but wow.  I brought out my OCF setup since there wasn't as much light left as I wanted when I finally had a chance to play and I really had to crank it up.  It was just hard!  But the only way to get better is to keep trying right?  And now the embarrassing part, the "best" photo I got. 



What makes this one the best?  The exposure was pretty good.  Most of the others I had to pull up 1 to 2 full stops.  Also some part of it is actually in focus.  I think you can kind of tell these are forget-me-nots.  What makes it less successful for me?  The focus wasn't where I would have wanted.  The DOF is really too shallow (and this was stopped all the way down).  The composition leaves a lot to be desired. 

Hopefully my next attempt is more successful!

Longwood June 2012

Back in June a friend of mine from work Karyn and I took a trip to Longwood on a weeknight after work.  She had just gotten a new macro lens for her Sony mirrorless camera and wanted to test it out.  As cool as those cameras are, watching her use it for macros made me really glad for my big bulky DSLR.  Hard as it is to nail focus with macros, it's much easier with a DSLR.

We mostly focused on shooting outside to start, I rarely get to be there in the evening and I wanted to play with the light. 






I didn't even notice the little bug on this while I was shooting!






I was really excited to get to play with a longer lens with the waterlilies! Though I need to go back earlier in the day when there will be more light.


Eventually I had to switch from my 180L to my old standby 100L (thank goodness for IS) as we were losing light, I just couldn't keep shooting at 1/400 and f/4!








The new light installation they have going on for the summer had just started up that week and it looked amazing! I can't wait to go back in August with Amanda and shoot that at night!

Early 5D Mark iii Macros

I took a couple of macros right after I got my 5D mark III but I didn't get around to really posting them until later since I didn't have a version of Lightroom that would work with them. Right now I am using one of the Lightroom 4 release canidates and it is working well, now that I am getting used to the huge changes in version 4 versus version 3.

How Close is 5x Anyway?

The day my 1-5x macro came I took some really quick and dirty shots to show how much closer I can get with that lens.  They aren't going to win any prizes but it does give you an idea.  It also 110% convinced me I need to learn to use my tripod all the time with that lens! 











Over this past weekend I did a better experiment, with the tripod this time.

1x


2x


3x


4x


Looks like I need to clean my ring and my sensor!

New Macro Loves

Canon has had some really awesome lens rebates going on for a month or two, and back in December I caved and dipped into my mythical 5d mark iii savings fund to pick up some new toys.  It had been a year since I had bought a new lens (I picked up a used 135L back in December 2010 as my last lens purchase), and I couldn't make it any longer. 

I decided to buy TWO new lenses, the 180L macro and the MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro. 

Here they are with my 100L for comparison:



And with the 1-5x fully extended:



I can't wait to take them out to Longwood and really test them out.  I am going to have to get used to using my tripod for them though.  I actually need to get some more quick release plates for them and a set of focusing rails for the 1-5x macro especially. 

OCF Experiment 1: Yellow Tulip

My friends Jodi and Jenn have been inspiring me with their dedication to learning off camera flash (OCF) and the other night I was sitting on the couch bored of watching Mike play video games and I though "hey why don't I finally break out that OCF gear that is collecting dust and start trying to learn it".

My first experiment was pretty simple, it took me more time to figure out how I wanted to set up the light stand, bracket, umbrella etc and yell at the cats than it did to actually shoot. My final set up ended up like this



And the resulting image



My favorite from the night was very similar, just a slight rotation of the flower, this is SOOC other than some dust removal, so it could have been brighter. I apparently need to work on that part of OCF.



It was actually much easier than I thought it was going to be, and the umbrella made the light much better than my earlier attempts with just my omni-bounce so I think I am on the right path.

Nikon Edits

In my last post I had mentioned shooting with a friend's Nikon D700 and one of the comments asked to see my SOOC with the Nikon.


SOOC, zeroed out in LR


With the import preset I have made for my macro images (it is a bit more "intense" than my normal import preset, I think I need to rework it some more to make it less intense)


Final edit

Nikon Macros

My wonderful friend Jodi let me borrow her Nikon D700 and 105mm micro lens at Longwood on Saturday. It was really fun to play around with a new system. Honestly if I had the money I would probably keep both a Canon and Nikon full frame camera, and lenses.

















Overall I would say I could be really happy with either system. I didn't find the Nikon easier to use, but I also think it wouldn't take me long to get the controls down. That camera body/lens combo did weigh a bit more than the Canon equivalent.

Photography Tips 21: Magnification Changes with Extension Tubes on Different Lens

Back in my first macro FAQ post (Photography Tips 12: Macro FAQ 1) I showed you what makes a macro lens a macro lens, and a way to calculate the magnification using a ruler.  I wanted to do a follow up experiment showing how using tubes increases the magnification, not only with my macro lens, but with any lens. 

I started out with the 100L, varying the length of tubes that I attached. 










The more tubes I added the greater the magnification I got, with all of them on, I could get to nearly twice life size!

I have so many lenses that I thought for the rest I would just try to get the maximum magnification I can and compare that to the specifications for the lens's maximum magnification without tubes. 




I think it is interesting with the 50 that you can start to see some barrel distortion.


Compare this with the magnification I measure in the previous post to see that without tubes I only got 1/3 life size with this lens, with the tubes I got to almost 1 1/2 times life size, that is a big improvement.


Again note the distortion and the lack of sharpness as we move away from the center of the lens, also notice that I had to cut down the number of tubes I was using.  If I put on more than this the focus fell inside the lens where I couldn't measure it. 


I also tested the 16-35 at 16mm, but even with the smallest tube I would have needed to put the ruler inside the lens to get it in focus, obviously that wasn't an option.  You can still so how much more distortion you are getting at 16mm as well. 

After all of this I had to graph my results to see if there was a trend.

Turns out the magnification goes up in a very linear trend as you add more length of tubes in the data for the 100L.   I assume it would also follow a linear pattern for the other lenses just with a different intercept and probably a different slope.  On the graph I included a starting point for each lens based on the published specifications.  You can see the slope is steeper at shorter focal lengths and much flatter at longer focal lengths. 

What does all of this mean? 

• Combining tubes with a true macro lens will let you get to magnifications larger than life size.


• Using tubes on a lens doesn't seem to change the inherent distortion in a lens, in fact it might magnify it since you are so much closer to your subject, I didn't test it but I assume this will be true with compression as well


• Not all lenses will function well with tubes, especially shorter focal lengths, the tubes may shorten the minimum focusing distance so much you might not be able to focus at all


• Tubes change the magnification in a linear fashion so if I measure a couple of points I can calculate how many mm of tubes I need to achieve a specific magnification.


• I can take just my tubes with my 24-70 or my 50 on my next vacation and not worry about missing having a macro lens with me


• The length of tubes increase the magnification faster on a shorter focal length.  And conversely on a longer focal length you will need more tubes to achieve a higher magnification