Greater than 1:1 with 105mm AF-D Micro

I was thinking about getting a Canon 500D close-up lens to attach to my Nikon

105mm micro lens to break the 1:1 barrier. It seems like a simple and quick

solution, but I was hoping someone might actually have tried it and have some

advice.

 

I also just saw in another thread that someone stacked a reversed 50mm on a

105mm micro, and that seems like a possibly better solution (my 50mm is an AI-

S lens, not AF, but I doubt that matters), although I've never tried a reversed-lens

set-up. I expect mainly to be doing field photography of living subjects, going hand-

held with flash.

 

Any thoughts and tips are appreciated.

You would probably want the 250D, not the 500D (the former limits maximum focus distance

to 0.25 meter, instead of 0.5 meter for the 500D). But I would recommend extension tubes as

another option; Kenko make some fully-coupled tubes for Nikon, I believe. Using a

teleconverter is also a possibility.

Going for greater than 1:1 HAND HELD, with any lens or combination of lenses is a sure recipe for fuzzy photos.

<I>Going for greater than 1:1 HAND HELD, with any lens or combination of lenses is

a sure recipe for fuzzy photos.</I><P>

 

Nah, it isn't that cut-and-dried. Good support is helpful and even essential for

longish exposures, but hand-held shots at greater than 1:1 can be made fairly

reliably at reasonable exposure times. Of course, the greater the reproduction ratio,

the harder it gets, but these images were all at higher magnifications than 1:1

(approaching 4:1 in a couple of cases) and all were hand-held:<P>

 

<A HREF="http://faculty.ucr.edu/~chappell/INW/arthropods/RFJS.html"><I>

Habronattus</i> jumping spider</a><BR>

 

<A HREF="http://faculty.ucr.edu/~chappell/INW/arthropods/Phidippus.html"><I>

Phidippus</i> jumping spider</a><BR>

 

 

<A HREF="http://faculty.ucr.edu/~chappell/INW/arthropods/yellowjumper.html"><I>

Thiodina </i> jumping spider</a><BR>

 

 

<A HREF="http://faculty.ucr.edu/~chappell/INW/arthropods/Thiodina.html"><I>

Thiodina </i> jumping spider</a><BR>

Wow- great shots! What lens or lenses did you use for these?

The jumping spider shots are all with a Canon MP-E 65 macro lens, but the issues of

hand holding, shallow depth of field, adequate light, etc. are pretty much the same with

most any lens at those magnifications.

Absolutely terrific photos; very sharp and detailed. I would guess that the ring flash makes for effectively very short exposures and keeps the (hand held) tremors at a minimum.

Mark... I don't wanna put you down BUT the real trick would be to get a jumping spider WHILE jumping! :)

 

Great shots really! Cheers, Rene'

Mark there is one very important information missing. How long and how many trials did it take you to get to that level of expertise?

 

Just a caveat to the newcomers of macro photography: be prepared for a long journey. I guess you did not get these shots after only a few days of practice?

Mark, great shots.

 

Is the reason you didn't need a tripod that you had a ring flash on? Greater than 1:1

with a ring-flash and no tripod? good. with a tripod and no ring flash? okay. with

neither? impossible,right?

<I>Mark... I don't wanna put you down BUT the real trick would be to get a jumping spider

WHILE jumping! :)</i><P>

 

That would indeed be a good trick. <A

HREF="http://www.stephendalton.co.uk/photo_1252988.html">Stephen Dalton</a> has

done it, but not me. On a lot of occasions I've been looking through the viewfinder at one

only to have it suddenly vanish because it jumped onto the front of the lens. Getting spider

silk off of an optical surface can be annoying.<P>

 

<I>Is the reason you didn't need a tripod that you had a ring flash on? Greater than 1:1 with

a ring-flash and no tripod? good. with a tripod and no ring flash?</I><P>

 

The flash helps because it does create a short effective exposure time, but I mainly use it

because otherwise it is very hard to get adequate light on the subject with a working

distance (front of lens to subject) of about 2.5-4 cm. The reason I don't -- or to be more

accurate, cannot -- use a tripod routinely with these spiders is simple: they won't sit still

long enough to compose and focus with a tripod-mounted camera. They're almost

constantly moving around, especially if they see large objects (like cameras) nearby. So

hand-holding is the only way I've been successful.<P>

 

<I> How long and how many trials did it take you to get to that level of expertise?</I><P>

 

To be honest it isn't that hard if you have all the equipment and do a little practicing on

inanimate objects first. When shooting jumping spiders there are, inevitably, a lot of

wasted shots -- not so much from camera shake as from not getting the subject in precise

focus before it moves. The viewfinder is dim, as the effective maximum aperture with the

MP-E 65 varies between f5.6 at 1:1 and f16 at 5:1. And of course, DOF is very small and

you'll hit diffraction limits quickly if you try to increase DOF by stopping down.