{"id":1384,"date":"2017-05-04T21:19:39","date_gmt":"2017-05-04T20:19:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/?p=1384"},"modified":"2017-05-04T21:19:39","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T20:19:39","slug":"canon-mp-e-65mm-f2-8-and-a-new-way-of-macro-lighting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/?p=1384","title":{"rendered":"Canon MP-E 65mm f\/2.8 and a new way of macro lighting"},"content":{"rendered":"

What occured to me is that the Canon MP-E 65mm F\/2.8 Super Macro 1-5x lens is used for extreme macro shooting at very short distances. The distances are so small that adding a ringflash may just spoil things already. So I set out to figure out a new way to light the subject. Especially since I shoot a lot of macro handheld, I need the higher shutter times, the smaller apertures… So light as well, and plenty of it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n



\nThinking up a lighting system<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Canon MP-E 65mm F\/2.8 Super Macro 1-5x surely is an amazing lens. But when you look at it, you immediately see that it is a weird duck; the lens looks like it has been built backwards! Makes sense though I guess, I have had great results reversing the Canon EF-S 15-85mm F\/3.5-5.6 IS USM and that setup looks very much like the MP-E 65mm.<\/p>\n

The upshot of this is that the front element of the MP-E 65mm is tiny:<\/p>\n

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Canon 6D with the Canon MP-E 65mm lens attached. Notice the small front element of this lens.<\/p><\/div>\n

As the front element is SO tiny compared to the 58mm filter size, I got a “bright” idea: Why not put led lighting there?
\n

\nOrdering Chinese<\/strong><\/p>\n

I figured I might be able to add led ring lighting to the lens. Time to order some chinese! Through ebay.com I looked up step-down rings. The best one I could find was a step-down ring from 58mm to 37mm. That would leave enough room for the lens to peek through, and to place some led rings as well!<\/p>\n

Next to the step-down ring I also ordered two “Angel Eyes” LED rings that would just fit on the step-down ring. As these angel eyes require 12V, I also added a step-up converter that takes 3-5V as input and delivers 12V, 1A output. Finally I ordered a Lithium battery type 18650 and a battery holder.
\n

\nThe result so far<\/strong><\/p>\n

This has been the result so far:<\/p>\n

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Angel-Eye LEDs mounted on the step-down ring<\/p><\/div>\n

I soldered the elements together to get a setup like this:<\/p>\n

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Canon MP-E 65mm with Angel Eyes<\/p><\/div>\n

Switching on the 3.6V Lithium powersource delivers quite a bright light out of the MP-E 65mm. But will it be enough:<\/p>\n

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Canon MP-E 65mm with the lights on<\/p><\/div>\n

Now to get ready to play with the setup!
\n

\nInitial tests<\/strong><\/p>\n

Playing around with the setup, I quickly discovered that the angel-eye leds are delivering a lot of light, but the angle at which they emit the light is very wide… So a lot of light is lost as it does not hit the subject. Still, it helps already… But I have to figure out a way to focus the light more on the target. Some quick test shots:<\/p>\n

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Test shot #1 with the Canon MP-E 65mm and angel-eye led lighting<\/p><\/div>\n

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Test shot #2. Another Spider shot with the Canon MP-E 65mm and the angeleye led lighting.<\/p><\/div>\n

Stay tuned for more on this!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What occured to me is that the Canon MP-E 65mm F\/2.8 Super Macro 1-5x lens is used for extreme macro shooting at very short distances. The distances are so small that adding a ringflash may just spoil things already. So I set out to figure out a new way to light the subject. Especially since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[233,227,232,231,229,136,224,225,230,228,226],"class_list":["post-1384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photobasics","tag-angel-eye","tag-angel-eyes","tag-angeleye","tag-angeleyes","tag-led","tag-macro","tag-mp-e-65","tag-mp-e-65mm","tag-ringled","tag-ringlight","tag-super-macro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1384"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1397,"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384\/revisions\/1397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}